Trump-blessed 'corrupt' merger will quietly gut blue state's economy: ex-GOP operative

The Trump administration's green light for an industry-shaking deal will gut a deep blue state's economy, a former GOP operative warned.

Paramount Skydance plans to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, and the $110 billion deal has the approval of Trump's Department of Justice. Steve Schmidt warned in his podcast about how the deal and moves by Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison will crush California.

"The impact of it to the state of California is immense," Schmidt said. "What will ultimately happen is David Ellison will move Paramount out of California to Texas. It will devastate the Los Angeles economy, the state economy by doing so."

Schmidt called on the California Legislature to gather for a special session for "investigating this merger, not as an anti-competitive merger, but as a corrupt act that was commenced with the payment of a bribe from Shari Redstone," Paramount's former controlling shareholder, who agreed to sell the company to David Ellison's Skydance. The "bribe" Schmidt means is Paramount's $16 million settlement of Trump's CBS lawsuit.

"They ought to investigate it as such all the way through," Schmidt said of California lawmakers. "And Democrats are going to have to be very, very tough customers as we get closer and closer to the election."