California Underground: Your Sane Insight into California Politics
Oct 1, 2026 · 1 hr 11 min · 13 segments
California's Attorney General sued to block a $111 billion media merger — then settled it after Newsom, Bass, and Becerra personally pushed him to fold. The deal is being sold as a win for California…
All right.
Let's get into the night's first story, which is about this paramount deal.
We had covered how Rob Bonta had sued as California attorney general to slow down or stop the paramount merger with Warner brothers, which would be an enormous merger of media companies, um, Of course, Rob Bonta sued and stepped in and stuck his nose into the whole business.
We had discussed this early on when it was announced how this would probably, most likely, actually almost without question, would hurt California and L.A. Hollywood's already dying.
We already know Hollywood is dying a slow, painful death.
And Rob Bonta sticking his nose into this deal wasn't going to help anyone at all.
So...
Let's watch this video right now.
We're going to go over it.
We have some other video footage, and I want to go over the deal that he actually caved on, why he caved, and we'll discuss all that.
Also, if you are watching live, if you're tuning in live at Tuesday night at 8 p.m., as always, make sure you let me know where you're tuning in from.
Love to hear, everybody, where you're tuning in from up and down the state.
So let's watch this first video, and we'll comment.
outrage online is it as bad as everyone's saying It ain't great.
huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies.
As well as outside the Paramount studio gates on Melrose.
I will never, ever work for these people.
Ever.
The target, David Ellison, the head of Paramount, who with support from his tech giant father, Larry Ellison, muscled through a settlement with the state of California over his purchase of Warner Brothers Studios and the largest merger of mass media from film, television, streaming, and news content in the history of Hollywood.
The terms of this settlement at this moment in our nation's history will be extraordinarily damaging.
Opponents argue commitments by Ellison for 30 films a year and keeping the studios in California are temporary agreements that will expire in five years.
Someone asked in the chat, and I was going to comment on this, what does this have to do with Trump? Why is Philip DeFranco already saying this is about Trump and his crony buddies and his billionaire crony buddies? Why does everything have to be about Trump? Maybe it's just the fact that there was this huge deal going through, and we're going to get to the pressure around it.
It's coming from within.
The call is coming from within the House.
All right.
Let's get into the night's first story, which is about this paramount deal.
We had covered how Rob Bonta had sued as California attorney general to slow down or stop the paramount merger with Warner brothers, which would be an enormous merger of media companies, um, Of course, Rob Bonta sued and stepped in and stuck his nose into the whole business.
We had discussed this early on when it was announced how this would probably, most likely, actually almost without question, would hurt California and L.A. Hollywood's already dying.
We already know Hollywood is dying a slow, painful death.
And Rob Bonta sticking his nose into this deal wasn't going to help anyone at all.
So...
Let's watch this video right now.
We're going to go over it.
We have some other video footage, and I want to go over the deal that he actually caved on, why he caved, and we'll discuss all that.
Also, if you are watching live, if you're tuning in live at Tuesday night at 8 p.m., as always, make sure you let me know where you're tuning in from.
Love to hear, everybody, where you're tuning in from up and down the state.
So let's watch this first video, and we'll comment.
outrage online is it as bad as everyone's saying It ain't great.
huge win to Trump and his billionaire cronies.
As well as outside the Paramount studio gates on Melrose.
I will never, ever work for these people.
Ever.
The target, David Ellison, the head of Paramount, who with support from his tech giant father, Larry Ellison, muscled through a settlement with the state of California over his purchase of Warner Brothers Studios and the largest merger of mass media from film, television, streaming, and news content in the history of Hollywood.
The terms of this settlement at this moment in our nation's history will be extraordinarily damaging.
Opponents argue commitments by Ellison for 30 films a year and keeping the studios in California are temporary agreements that will expire in five years.
Someone asked in the chat, and I was going to comment on this, what does this have to do with Trump? Why is Philip DeFranco already saying this is about Trump and his crony buddies and his billionaire crony buddies? Why does everything have to be about Trump? Maybe it's just the fact that there was this huge deal going through, and we're going to get to the pressure around it.
It's coming from within.
The call is coming from within the House.
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