President Donald Trump has been feuding with CNN since his campaign, but recently, that feud has gotten nastier.
CNN posted and retracted a story about Trump campaign advisor Anthony Scaramucci allegedly having ties to Russia, and the story’s retraction led to the resignation of three different journalists as CNN said that the story had not met its journalistic integrity standards, though they did not say whether that meant the story wasn’t factual.
Trump and his team celebrated the retraction and came after CNN even harder for it. Then, over the weekend, the president sparked outrage when he tweeted out a gif of himself wrestling and punching a person with the CNN logo for a head.
But the feud could be moving beyond story retractions and Twitter videos, according to a story published by the New York Times.
The story pointed to the merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T as a “potential point of leverage” over the news network. Since the merger has to be approved by the Justice Department, “the president’s animus toward CNN remains a wild card” in the merger, according to the New York Times.
While there is reportedly very little that could stop the merger, AT&T might be considering trying to “neutralize” CNN President Jeff Zucker when it comes to the merger. He could be fired or could be moved to a corporate position with less control over CNN, though Zucker has insisted that none of this has affected his decision-making at CNN.