The high-level meeting that took place about 10 days ago hasn’t been previously reported. Several White House officials also suggested during the sitdown that a broader investigation is necessary focusing on Netflix’s market power, a government official who attended the confab said.  

“Basically everyone agreed that Netflix presents unique antitrust concerns and if it won the bidding war it would be one long slog and touch off an investigation along the lines of those of Google and Amazon,” the government official said. 

Netflix’s interest in acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery has raised antitrust concerns at the White House, sources told The Post. Getty Images

“Netflix already has market dominance but if you add a major streaming service that would stifle competition at some point,” the official added.

White House and Netflix press reps had no immediate comment.

The meeting comes as the Warner Bros. Discovery board has scheduled a Monday afternoon deadline to receive a second round of offers for the company. WBD controls the No. 1-ranked Warner Bros. studio and the No 3 streaming service, HBO Max, as well as a slew of cable channels including HBO and CNN.

Paramount Skydance, controlled by Hollywood producer David Ellison and his father, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is expected to raise its initial bid, which in mid-October came in at $23.50 a share for the entire company.

Cable giant Comcast, run by Brian Roberts, is also expected to sweeten a more recent offer, although it has been given low odds of making it through the Trump regulatory gauntlet because of the president’s disdain for Comcast’s relentlessly anti-MAGA cable channel MSNBC, recently renamed MS NOW. 

Warner Bros. Discovery’s board has scheduled a Monday afternoon deadline to receive a second round of offers for the company. SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

Meanwhile, Netflix is also expected to make a sweetened bid for WBD’s studio and streaming service – and faces a different but equally difficult set of hurdles getting regulatory approval, Trump officials said during the meeting.

The 28-year-old company created by Reed Hastings and led by its voluble CEO Ted Sarandos is currently the world’s largest streaming service with 300 million subscribers. White House officials at the meeting suggested its size could hamper competition in streaming where Americans increasingly consume their entertainment as cord cutting continues to shrink the cable TV business. They also raised the likelihood of European regulatory push back, the government official said.

Sarandos as well as a slew of company legal officials and lobbyists have been pressing the flesh in DC. As previously reported by The Post, they’ve been pleading a case that an acquisition of the No. 3 streamer and a major studio wouldn’t violate antitrust laws because of a legal theory known as “category ambiguity.”

Netflix chief Ted Sarandos and company legal officials and lobbyists have been pleading the case in Washington, DC that a deal for No. 3 streamer HBO Max and a major studio wouldn’t violate antitrust laws. Alan West/Hogan Media/Shutterstock

According to the theory, antitrust law doesn’t necessarily apply to streaming services because of the prevalence of content that’s available on YouTube, TikTok and other social media. The idea is that streaming video is now so ubiquitous that it can’t be cornered and price gauged in the traditional sense.

But the pitch, while winning converts with members of the WBD board and some quarters of the DC regulatory framework, is now being met with significant skepticism from senior White House officials who advise Trump on media policy, according to a government official who attended the meeting last week. 

Trump officials also voiced concern that Netflix is already wielding enormous power in the Hollywood ecosystem, not just with consumers but also when dealing with program creators and talent. A recurring theme of Trump’s regulatory agenda during his first term and today has been anti-competitive business models of media and tech concentration, the source noted. 

Paramount Skydance, controlled by Hollywood producer David Ellison, above, and his father, billionaire Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is expected to raise its initial bid of $23.50 a share for all of Warner Bros. Discovery. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

If Netflix’s bid won out, the scale and scope of the deal to buy HBO Max and the studio should lead to a lengthy, possibly yearslong probe by the DOJ’s antitrust division run by Trump appointee Gale Slater. The probe could expand beyond the merits of its WBD deal to its entire operations, “something that the company has avoided until now,” the government official who attended said.  

The meeting follows a letter by GOP California congressman Darrell Issa to Slater and her boss US AG Pam Bondi warning that “Netflix currently wields unequaled market power. Adding both HBO Max’s subscribers and Warner Bros.’ premier content rights would further enhance this position.”

But Sarandos may feel he has no choice but to make a run at WBD, and eventually fight off Trump’s regulatory cops in federal court if they nix his bid.

“If Paramount owns all its content plus Warner and HBO they will have control of a massive and quality library, and put Netflix behind the eight-ball in terms of negotiating for WBD content on its streaming service,” a media industry insider told The Post.

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A fire tore through a large commercial farm in western Ohio this week that was housing hundreds of thousands of chickens raised to lay eggs, dealing another blow to a state egg industry that was already reeling from the effects of an Avian influenza outbreak.

Fire and state officials did not specify how many birds died in the fire.

Ohio is one of the largest egg-farming states in the nation, producing some 10 billion eggs a year, according to a coalition of state farmers. The onset of avian influenza in the United States in 2022 has killed off millions of egg-laying chickens, raising prices and leading to nationwide shortages.

Most of those outbreaks took place in western Ohio, including in Darke County, the site of the fire.

Firefighters were dispatched after 6 a.m. on Tuesday to New Madison Pullets, on the outskirts of the village of New Paris near the Indiana border, said Chief Robert Cook of the New Madison Volunteer Fire Department.

Firefighters from four counties in Ohio and two counties in Indiana deployed equipment and personnel, working through bitter cold, snow and thick smoke as they struggled to tap ice-covered natural water sources, Chief Cook said in an interview.

By the time the fire was extinguished, at about 1 p.m. Tuesday, it had destroyed a main building that was holding thousands of chickens.

“It was a total loss,” he said.

The barn where the fire occurred had a permit to hold 280,000 pullets, Brian Baldridge, the director of the Ohio Department of Agriculture, said on Friday. Pullets are chicks that are raised until they are 16- to 18-weeks-old, and then are transferred to other facilities as egg-laying hens. Mr. Baldridge said he did not know how many were lost in the blaze.

“This farm is one of Ohio’s largest in regards to total pullets housed,” he said in an email.

The company had a permit to operate a “concentrated animal feeding facility,” Mr. Baldridge said, referring to operations that house large numbers of birds. An employee at New Madison Pullets declined to comment. It was not clear from official statements how many other buildings were damaged at the farm.

Mark Whittaker, the Darke County sheriff, said avian influenza was an “absolutely significant” concern in his county and in Mercer County to the north, which are home to some of the state’s largest poultry farms.

The fire at the Ohio farm “is adding insult to injury in this scenario to the poultry producers in the area,” Sheriff Whittaker said. “We have millions of birds in this county.”

Sheriff Whittaker, whose office sent up a drone to help investigators during the fire, said he had “preliminary” information that the cause was not suspicious.

The fire and explosions bureau of the Ohio State Fire Marshal’s office is investigating, Jarrod Clay, a spokesman, said in an email on Thursday.

“The dollar loss is anticipated to be high,” Mr. Clay said.

The bird flu made its way to the United States in 2022 after it was detected in Canada. It has driven a recent shortage of eggs that has driven prices up, brought attention to any developments affecting the supply and prompted Waffle House to add an egg surcharge.

As of the first week of February, there had been 23 avian influenza outbreaks this year in Arizona, California, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Indiana and Washington, causing the deaths of 21.1 million birds, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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In late November, Costco announced that it was recalling nearly 260,000 eggs sold under the Kirkland Signature brand in 25 stores nationwide due to potential salmonella contamination.

The organic pasture-raised eggs were sourced from Handsome Brook Farms in New York State and then distributed to Costco stores throughout the South, including Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee.

Costco has recalled more than 10,000 batches of eggs due to potential salmonella contamination. Bloomberg via Getty Images

The affected eggs were sold at the 25 Costco stores beginning on Nov. 22. They have a use-by date of Jan. 5, 2025.

The recall applies to Kirkland Signature Organic Pasture Raised 24-Count Eggs packaged in plastic cartons with the UPC 9661910680 and Julian code 327.

Anyone who bought the eggs are strongly advised to throw them away and contact their local Costco for a refund.

The most mild cases of salmonella can cause uncomfortable symptoms such as diarrhea, fever, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain.

The FDA over the weekend ruled on the designation of the recall as “class 1” — the highest alert level possible.

The FDA is warning consumers of potential salmonella poisoning stemming from the purchase of Kirkland Signature eggs.

Severe cases of salmonella poisoning could affect vital organs including the brain, heart and spinal cord.

As of Monday, there have been no reported cases of salmonella poisoning related to the recall of the eggs.

The Post has sought comment from Costco.

In late November, Costco announced that it was recalling nearly 260,000 eggs sold under the Kirkland Signature brand in 25 stores in the South. Christopher Sadowski

The recall of eggs from Costco is the latest high-profile potential lapse in food safety that has generated headlines.

Frito-Lay, the PepsiCo subsidiary which makes potato chips, announced last week that it was voluntarily recalling 13-ounce bags of its Lay’s Classic Potato Chips due to fears they may “contain undeclared milk” that can pose a “risk of a serious or life-threatening allergic reaction” to consumers.

McDonald’s earlier this year paused the sale of its popular Quarter Pounder hamburgers in thousands of its restaurants in the Western US after an E. coli outbreak linked to onions that were used to make the sandwich was blamed for the death of one person. Scores of others across 14 states fell ill.

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