David Folkenflik

And Trump has shown he's willing to interfere with corporate maneuvering like the one we're seeing play out right now.

President Trump has said that he's very interested in the fate of CNN.

He's sort of indicated that he will and then he won't and that he might play a role in this, as he has in so many corporate transactions in his return to office over the past 13 months.

And this is, I think, as high a profile one as you can imagine.

After all, the Ellisons only took over Paramount last summer.

And that was after they made a number of concessions that appealed to the Trump administration.

The Ellison's father, Larry Ellison, was the co-founder of Oracle.

He's been a financial backer and advisor to Trump.

And they're hoping that, you know, glides the path here as well.

Sure.

And we have some competing versions of exactly what happened.

But as we heard that excerpt, Colbert came out to his audience and said, we can't present to you this interview.

We were told by lawyers that it's not possible and that if we did, we'd have to

offer his two leading competitors in the Democratic primary for the U.S.

Senate seat from Texas this year equal time on the show.

And that said, CBS came out the next day and said, no, no, we just gave him advice and said this is what his show would have to do in that context if they were to do that.

We tried to advise him.

And Colbert that very night came forward once more and said, absolute baloney.

That's not what this network said.

The