Michael Wolff suggests Trump team pitched Don Jr show to WBD to win favor with White House
WASHINGTON, DC: It’s not every day that a political scion tries to land a fishing show.
According to a new profile in New York Magazine, Donald Trump Jr apparently has his eye on a new gig outside of politics. The 47-year-old reportedly wants to go full Steve Irwin-meets-Ted Nugent on the Discovery Channel.
This comes courtesy of author Michael Wolff, who dropped the bombshell in a sweeping piece on Warner Bros Discovery (WBD) CEO David Zaslav.
As Wolff reports, someone inside the "Trump orbit" approached WBD with an offer they may or may not be able to refuse: Give Don Jr his own show — specifically a hunting and fishing series — and maybe they’d be able to cozy up to President Donald Trump during his second term, per the Daily Beast.
Nature shows, network deals, and the Trump team's response
This wasn’t just a wild idea floating around social media. "WBD confirmed that a company representative recently reached out to the Trump orbit seeking advice about how the company might advantageously interact with the White House and improve its Trump-age odor," Michael Wolff wrote.
Of course, this isn’t just about fishing and rifles. It’s also about CNN, the so-called “crown jewel” of the WBD empire that’s been the president's favorite punching bag for nearly a decade.
"The reported message was to look at the example of Amazon and Jeff Bezos paying Melania Trump $40 million to participate in a documentary about herself," Wolff continued. "Don Jr might like a hunting and fishing show on the Discovery Channel, they were told. And that CNN could have more pro-Trump voices."
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Naturally, Wolff’s scoop didn’t sit well with Trump’s inner circle — especially White House Communications Director Steven Cheung, who wasted no time torching both the messenger and the message.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, Cheung declared: “Michael Wolff is a lying sack of s**t and has been proven to be a fraud. He routinely fabricates stories originating from his sick and warped imagination, only possible because he has a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”
When The Daily Beast previously pressed the Trump camp about Wolff’s book 'All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America', Cheung had similar insults, including calling Wolff "a lying sack" of feces with a "peanut-sized brain."
Media landscape scrambles for Trump 2.0
Whether or not Donald Trump Jr gets to go full "camo and camera crew" on the Discovery Channel, the whole situation sheds light on how the media industry is recalibrating in real time under Donald Trump’s second presidency.
It’s not just Warner Bros Discovery playing the game. According to the report, Paramount Global is also scaling back diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in hopes of staying on Trump’s good side as it seeks FCC approval for a high-stakes merger with Skydance Media.
And as for Zaslav, he may be a registered Democrat, but business is business.
If he wants to pull off anything close to the massive 2021 merger that created Warner Bros Discovery — a mashup of Discovery, Inc and AT&T’s WarnerMedia — he’ll need the thumbs-up from Trump’s SEC.
WBD is reportedly working on a strategy to spin off its traditional cable channels from its more profitable streaming and studio platforms, mainly Max.
Interestingly, NBCUniversal is pursuing a similar move with a temporary spinoff company, SpinCo, and there’s even talk that SpinCo's unwanted NBCU channels could end up merged with Discovery’s portfolio in the future.
'Crown jewel' CNN and Donald Trump’s longstanding grudge
One of the messiest parts of this saga is that, despite Donald Trump’s deep-rooted hatred for CNN, the network is still under David Zaslav’s umbrella, which makes for one of the most awkward corporate-meets-politics relationships ever.
Trump, who won the presidency in 2016 and 2024 (after losing in 2020), has made no secret of his disdain for CNN.
And while Zaslav has called the network a “crown jewel” of his media empire, the tension between him and Trump remains a glaring issue.
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