President Trump champions television broadcaster Nexstar's $6.2B merger bid for Tegna
WASHINGTON, DC: President Donald Trump has publicly thrown his weight behind a proposed $6.2 billion merger between broadcasting giants Nexstar and Tegna on Saturday, February 7, urging federal regulators to approve the deal despite longstanding ownership limits.
The backing pushes several conservative media voices who stand firmly against the merger to question the president's intent.
Trump frames merger as a weapon against legacy media
Trump made his case in a Truth Social post, casting the proposed Nexstar-Tegna deal as a necessary counterweight to major national broadcasters.
A merger between the two companies would run afoul of Federal Communications Commission rules that cap how many local television stations a single owner can control.
Trump, however, argued that loosening those restrictions would strengthen competition rather than weaken it.
“We need more competition against the enemy, the Fake News National TV Networks”, Trump wrote.
“Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar-Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level”, he added.
Trump appeared to acknowledge the internal conservative resistance while brushing it aside, suggesting that critics of the merger failed to grasp its long-term benefits.
He implied that even those opposing the deal would eventually profit from its approval.
“Those that are opposed don’t fully understand how good the concept of this Deal is for them, but they will in the future,” Trump wrote. “Get that deal done!”
For the merger to proceed, it would require approval from both the Department of Justice and the FCC, agencies that play a critical role in enforcing antitrust and broadcast ownership rules.
As of Saturday, neither agency had publicly indicated how it would respond to Trump’s call.
Nexstar’s recent alignment with the White House
Nexstar has, in recent months, taken steps that appear to place it closer to the Trump administration’s orbit.
The broadcaster joined Sinclair in briefly blocking 'Jimmy Kimmel Live!' from airing on its affiliated stations after he remarked on the killing of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Both networks later restored the program following discussions with ABC and Disney, but the episode highlighted Nexstar’s growing sensitivity to political pressure from the administration.
Despite Trump’s endorsement, the merger has drawn resistance from prominent conservative media figures who argue that consolidation would damage, not strengthen, the media ecosystem.
