David Ellison Hosting Private Trump Dinner While Awaiting Admin Approval to Buy CNN

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison will be hosting a small dinner “honoring” President Donald Trump next week as his company awaits federal approval for its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, according to multiple reports.

Ellison sent invites for the “intimate gathering” — first reported by Breaker on Tuesday night — that will take place in Washington, D.C. on April 23, two days before the annual White House Correspondents’ Association bash. The dinner will also honor CBS News’ White House correspondents.

It comes two months after Paramount Skydance beat out Netflix in the battle to buy WB Discovery. The deal will put CNN under Ellison’s control, as well as other properties like HBO and its film studio.

The dinner also follows Ellison getting the regulatory green light from Trump’s Justice Department and the FCC last year for the $8 billion Paramount-Skydance deal. That deal put Ellison in charge of CBS, and he quickly installed The Free Press co-founder and editor Bari Weiss as the new boss of CBS News.

Trump said last year he would “be involved” in the WB Discovery deal, and the New York Post reported the Trump admin favored Paramount over Netflix. The president called Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos a “great person” late last year, but a last-minute canceled meeting between Trump and Sarandos in February led to speculation Netflix pulled out of negotiations over fear it would not get government approval.

Ellison’s dinner party for Trump and the CBS News crew will be held at the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace — which the president renamed last year from the U.S. Institute of Peace. Trump’s name has since been added to the building’s exterior. That came around the same time he added his name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Trump has said he will attend the WHCA party on April 25 for the first time as president. CBS News has invited Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and longtime Trump adviser Stephen Miller as its guests to the event.

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