The media mogul says he doesn't care who wins — just as long as that person doesn't do what Joe Biden has been doing for the last four years.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav holds court at the 2024 Sun Valley Conference.
Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images
Media and tech bosses hate Joe Biden's antitrust policies, which they think are holding them back from buying and selling each other.
But they tend to be careful about how they express that stuff out loud. What with the upcoming election and all.
Not WBD CEO David Zaslav, though.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav has no opinion about who should win the US presidential election this fall. Except he doesn't want Joe Biden to win.
And no, he didn't come out and use those exact words.
Asked about the upcoming presidential election, Zaslav said it mattered less to him which party wins, as long as the next president was friendly to business."We just need an opportunity for deregulation, so companies can consolidate and do what we need to to be even better," he said.
To be clear: What Zaslav is saying is what many business leaders — particularly in media and tech — say all the time, but relatively quietly: They don't like Joe Biden's antitrust regime, which has led the US government to question and in many cases try to block all kinds of mergers and acquisitions — from Microsoft's $69 billion deal to buy Activision (which eventually went through) to Adobe's $20 billion deal to buy Figma (which didn't go through) to Meta's $400 million deal for Within, a VR company (which eventually went through, too).
But it's one thing to think that kind of thing, and to talk about it with other moguls and people who like them. But if you're the high-profile leader of a very high-profile media conglomerate — which includes a very high-profile news organization — you may not want to weigh in on the election while standing in front of a press gaggle. Especially when you've spent the past few years dealing with self-inflicted PR wounds. (WBD didn't respond to my request for comment.)
Which is a reminder that moguls have a few options when it comes to Sun Valley and the media, which is technically an off-the-record event (though some journalists, like CNN's Anderson Cooper, arrive to host closed-door interviews):
You can say inscrutable stuff to the press gaggle, like Paramount owner (for now) Shari Redstone. Per Bloomberg, Redstone "pointed to reporters as she arrived at the Sun Valley resort and said: 'We're going to save the world together!'"
Looks like Zaslav went for a 3-1 combo, and I give him credit for that. Especially his attempt to zhuzh the place up with a bandana and corduroy trucker jacket. Perhaps it's this $4,500 Brunello Cucinelli one?
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