President Donald Trump's pick to oversee the DOJ's Antitrust division has previously said he approved of AT&T's massive $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner. The White House announced today that it had selected Makan Delrahim to be the assistant attorney general for antitrust, a key position that will be responsible for making or breaking many companies' M&A ambitions. In a recent interview Delrahim said he didn't see any "major antitrust problems" with AT&T's deal, which AT&T lobbyists have been selling for much of the year. "The sheer size of it, and the fact that it’s media, I think will get a lot of attention,” Delrahim said in October. “However, I don’t see this as a major antitrust problem." That runs in stark contrast to President Trump's election-trail campaign to block the deal, and dismantle other deals like it. "In an example of the power structure I’m fighting, AT&T is buying Time Warner and thus CNN -- a deal we will not approve in my administration because it’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few," Trump had said while campaigning. "Comcast's purchase of NBC concentrated far too much power in one massive entity that is trying to tell the voters what to think and what to do," Trump also said on the campaign trail. "Deals like this destroy democracy and we'll look at breaking that deal up and other deals like that. That should never, ever have been approved in the first place, they're trying to poison the mind of the American voter." Obviously the Comcast and NBC Universal union (merged since 2011) is going nowhere. And Trump's comments since have left the door open to a possible approval of AT&T Time Warner despite his campaign promise. "I have been on the record in the past of saying it’s too big and we have to keep competition," Trump said in January. "So, but other than that, I haven’t, you know, I haven’t seen any of the facts, yet. I’m sure that will be presented to me and to the people within government." AT&T's case is being "presented" by roughly 100 lobbyists day in, day out. Critics of the deal worry that giving AT&T more power over content could result in it blocking competitors from the licensing deals they'll need to compete with AT&T's DirecTV Now streaming service. Consumer advocates and other critics have also consistently stated that AT&T's been using usage caps and "zero rating" to give its own content an unfair overall advantage in the market. Delrahim was a lobbyist for AT&T from 2007 to 2008, but also fought against the attempted AT&T acquisition of T-Mobile on behalf of Dish Network. So readers: what's the chance you think the deal will be approved?
Makan ##i , who has been chosen by the White House to head the antitrust division of the Department of Justice , has stated that Microsoft 's potential $ 85bn deal with Time Warner does n't present any " major antitrust problems " , despite Donald Trump claiming during his presidential campaign the deal represented " too much concentration of power in the hands of too few " . Since being elected , Trump has changed his stance .