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Article snippet: On Oct. 22, 2016, Donald J. Trump made his own history in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where he was holding a campaign rally just weeks before his election. “AT&T is buying Time Warner, and thus CNN,” he told his audience, calling the proposed merger an example of a media “power structure” that was working to suppress his vote and the voices of his supporters. It was, he said, “a deal we will not approve in my administration.” He specifically cited media concentration. But his singling out of CNN in the context of an alleged plot against him was lost on no one. Now, CNN is at the heart of a dispute between the Justice Department and AT&T and Time Warner. Three people from the companies said Wednesday that the department insisted that AT&T divest either CNN’s parent company, Turner Broadcasting, or its valuable DirecTV service in return for approval. This raised the chilling possibility that Mr. Trump was making good on his threatening statements in Gettysburg. Adding to the chill was the lack of a compelling legal justification for the department’s conditions, which appeared to come out of the blue. Asking AT&T to divest DirecTV seems to be a non-starter, given how essential DirecTV is as a satellite distributor of content, and the Justice Department had to know that. So in effect, AT&T’s only choice would be to jettison Turner. Justice Department officials offered reporters a different version on Wednesday, saying it was AT&T that had offere... Link to the full article to read more