David Ellison, CEO of Paramount Skydance, dined at the White House Thursday evening at the state dinner held for visiting Chinese President Xi Jinping — but the White House shut out reporters for CNN, the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned news network Ellison is about to gain control over, as well as MS NOW. Ellison attended the soiree with his wife, Sandra Lynn Ellison, among a guest list of more than 100 government officials and business leaders.
Ellison’s Paramount is coming down the home stretch in closing a $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros., after reaching a settlement with 12 Democratic state attorneys general this week. (The judge in the case is still reviewing the proposed settlement.) The Paramount-WBD deal was approved by Trump’s Justice Department earlier this year without any conditions. Also attending were tech bigwigs including Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Apple chairman Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta chairman and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, and Elon Musk. Other guests included Fox News’ Bret Baier, Laura Ingraham and Jesse Watters; Secretary of Health Robert F.
Kennedy and his wife, Cheryl Hines; and U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts. According to CNN, the White House denied two of its staffers from covering Jinping’s arrival back at the White House for the dinner, after “trying to tell the network which type of journalists could cover the event.” A “press wrangler” barred a CNN producer and reporter from accessing the event and “told them to ‘talk to’ White House Communications Director Steven Cheung,” CNN reported.
Staffers from MS NOW also were prevented from covering the Chinese president’s arrival. The White House’s barring CNN and MS NOW from covering the event came after Donald Trump banned the networks (and Politico) from covering White House events. The news outlets sued, and a judge granted a temporary restraining order requiring the White House to restore their access.
The White House complied and reissued press passes to staffers for the outlets Thursday morning — but then blocked the networks at the state dinner. Trump is known to be friendly with both David Ellison and his father, Oracle founder and mega-billionaire Larry Ellison. This April, David Ellison in threw a dinner party in Washington, D.C., “honoring” Trump and the First Amendment, which was attended by CBS News execs and journalists.
On the menu, per the White House: A first course of a “silky-smooth velouté” made of sweet yellow squash, followed by sesame-crusted sea bass, accompanied by braised baby bok choy and roasted garden eggplant. For dessert was a “smooth vanilla crémeux” with a “vibrant sour cherry confit center” atop a “rich walnut frangipane,” and ice cream made with “harvested White House honey.” Performances during the dinner were headlined by Christopher Macchio, a classically trained tenor who performed at the 2025 Presidential Inauguration, along with military musicians from the U.S. Marines Corps and the U.S.
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