Washington is used to hearing that bigger is better.
Bigger banks are said to be "more stable." Bigger tech platforms are "more efficient."
Larger media companies, we’re told, offer “more choice” to consumers.
Netflix's attempt to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery exposes how hollow that claim has become.
President Trump said that this deal "could be a problem" and that he and his administration will be personally involved in the ultimate decision.
Good. There's nothing bold or pro-consumer about this deal.
It's a power grab over what gets made and how it reaches audiences.
Conservatives shouldn’t kid themselves about what's on the line.
This merger would concentrate cultural and economic leverage into fewer hands, in ways that run against free markets, free speech, and real consumer choice.
Netflix already dominates subscription streaming while Warner Bros. Discovery controls one of the most powerful content libraries in the world, including HBO, DC, and decades of film and television that continue to shape global culture.
Combine the two, and you don't get a scrappy challenger. You get a vertically integrated giant that controls both the storefront and the supply chain.
Markets never fail all at once.
They fail quietly when leverage shifts.
When one buyer becomes too large, creators adjust.
Independent studios fall in line. Distributors lose bargaining power. Consumers pay more while being told they are receiving "bundled value."
We've seen this movie before. Consolidation is always sold as consumer-friendly, but the reality is often higher prices, fewer options, and less ability to walk away when terms change.
Streaming was supposed to unbundle cable. Instead of replacing it, the industry rebuilt it, this time with fewer constraints and more centralized authority.
Republicans have raised similar concerns in recent congressional hearings on media and tech consolidation. "Prices have gone up but not down," Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., noted on Jan. 7 of Netflix-led streaming services.
Why?
Because when competition is thin, prices all too often rise. When exit options disappear, platforms all too often tighten the screws on their client base.
Supporters of the merger argue that size is necessary to compete in a crowded digital landscape. Sometimes, this is true, but taken in the context of the Netflix-WBD deal, the argument collapses.
Netflix is already using its market share to squeeze consumers. What do you think it will do if it gets even bigger?
This is precisely why conservatives should resist the reflex to let every merger through.
Ones that pose no risk to consumers or the free marketplace should be allowed through, yes, and that’s a point that the Biden administration refused to concede.
But those that don’t pass the muster of the consumer welfare standard should not be given the Department of Justice or Federal Trade Commission's time of day.
Antitrust is not a progressive invention.
It's a conservative safeguard against concentrated power, both economic and cultural. Theodore Roosevelt understood this.
Blocking this deal would be consistent with a long conservative tradition that treats competition, not corporate size, as the foundation of freedom.
Streaming platforms now shape far more than entertainment. They influence cultural norms, political narratives, and perspectives treated as legitimate.
Netflix has made no secret of its corporate worldview. It has embedded ideological priorities into its content standards, internal governance, and public posture.
As a private company, it’s free to do that. But when a firm with that outlook tightens its grip not just on what gets made, but on what gets found, the consequences ripple outward.
The danger is not that conservatives will be banned from watching content. It’s subtler than that.
This market is one where dissenting or unorthodox projects struggle to find buyers.
Where risk-taking declines.
Where consumers experience "choice" as a cosmetic feature inside a tightly managed system of algorithms that steer them into whatever the Hollywood elites want them to see.
This is why the merger deserves serious resistance.
Netflix’s ideological posture matters, but it the deeper problem is structural: the deal would fuse content creation and distribution in one company, weakening competition, squeezing creators and smaller rivals, and concentrating cultural influence in ways that are hard to unwind.
President Trump has been right to question media consolidation before.
He has repeatedly warned about the dangers of concentrated platforms acting as de facto gatekeepers of speech and culture.
He has come out strongly against ending the national audience reach cap, containing the market dominance of massive TV broadcasting station groups.
That instinct applies here. Markets work when companies fear losing customers. Speech thrives when no single platform dominates access.
Blocking this deal would affirm that antitrust still means something. And it would remind corporate America that "efficiency" does not justify market capture.
Do conservatives want to be on the side of this debate, advocating for a media economy built on competition, choice, and decentralized power?
Or do they want to be on the side defending the oligopoly model in which size shields companies from accountability, while consumers absorb the cost?
President Trump has chosen Option A. I have too.
George Landrith is the President of the Frontiers of Freedom Institute and the author of "Let Freedom Ring… Again: Can Self-Evident Truths Save America from Further Decline?" Read more George Landrith Insider articles — Click Here Now.