The Ellisons are building a media empire. Trump keeps cheering them on.

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President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth publicly celebrated the wealthy Ellison family’s growing media empire in recent days, even as the Trump administration is reviewing Paramount Skydance’s deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery and its assets including CNN for $110 billion.

“The Ellison family, two great people, great people. It’s a great family,” Trump said Monday, in remarks ahead of a Kennedy Center board meeting that referenced CBS and its upcoming broadcast of a UFC event.

On Friday, Hegseth called Warner Bros.-owned CNN’s coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran “fake news” after it reported that the administration had underestimated the risk of disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. “The sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better,” Hegseth said. A spokeswoman for CNN declined to comment on his remarks.

CNN, a longtime target of Trump’s complaints about the media, is among the most prominent assets in Paramount’s pending acquisition of Warner Bros., which requires approval from the Justice Department.

Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle and a longtime friend and ally to Trump, has financially backstopped Paramount’s pending deal to buy Warner Bros. and is also a major investor in the White House-blessed deal that spun off TikTok into a U.S. company. That has helped rebrand the tech billionaire and his son David into media tycoons - with some help from Trump.

The administration’s posture toward Paramount’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has drawn scrutiny since a bidding war erupted over the troubled media giant late last year.

After Netflix announced an $83 billion deal in December to buy most of Warner Bros. Discovery and spin off CNN and other cable properties, Trump told reporters he would be “involved” in deciding whether to approve it, citing the streaming giant’s market power as a potential concern.

Days later, Paramount launched a hostile bid for the entire company, including CNN, backed by a personal guarantee of more than $40 billion from Larry Ellison. Netflix ultimately withdrew its offer last month after Paramount increased its bid, allowing it to strike a deal to merge with Warner Bros. The merger could reshape Hollywood and the news industry by placing two major Hollywood studios (Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures), two major streaming services (HBO Max and Paramount+), and two major news brands (CBS News and CNN) under one roof.