David Ellison Dinner Honoring Trump Attended by Bari Weiss, Norah O’Donnell

President Donald Trump delivered remarks for “nearly an hour” at the dinner party David Ellison hosted in Washington, D.C., on Thursday evening “honoring” Trump, per the New York Times.

Ellison organized the event in Trump’s honor (as well as to recognize CBS News’ White House reporters) as his Paramount Skydance is looking to win regulatory approval from the Trump administration’s Justice Department for the $111 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery. On Wednesday, WBD shareholders overwhelmingly approved the company’s sale to Paramount.

In addition to senior members of the Trump administration, those in attendance included Bari Weiss, editor in chief of CBS News; former “CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell; Tom Cibrowski, CBS News president; Jan Crawford, the network’s chief legal correspondent; chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes; and Weijia Jiang, a White House correspondent at CBS News who is president of the White House Correspondents’ Association.

Weiss “joined Ellison at Mr. Trump’s table,” alongside her wife, Nellie Bowles; First Lady Melania Trump; and Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim (who was a DOJ antitrust official during Trump’s first term), per the Times report.

Ellison’s dinner guests also included Todd Blanche, who assumed the role of acting U.S. attorney general after Trump fired Pam Bondi earlier this month. As noted by the Times, “Mr. Blanche oversees the Justice Department, whose antitrust division is set to review the Warner Bros. acquisition.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Stephen Miller, deputy White House chief of staff, also attended the function, according to the report.

What Trump said during his almost one-hour speech was not detailed in the Times report.

CBS News staffers “described consternation within the CBS newsroom over the event’s potential to create a perception of coziness between the news division and the Trump administration,” according to the Times article.

A Paramount Skydance spokeswoman declined to comment. The White House and CBS News did not respond to requests for comment Friday.

The event was held two days before the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on Saturday, April 25 — where Trump is also expected to be attendance. The Ellison-hosted dinner on April 23, which started with cocktails at 6:15 p.m., took place at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. In December, the State Department announced that it was being renamed “The Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace.”

After Paramount Skydance beat out Netflix to buy Warner Bros., staffers at CNN privately expressed fears that the Trump-friendly ownership of Paramount will steer CNN’s coverage toward a more conservative ideological bent. Weiss, whose digital news outlet The Free Press was acquired by Paramount last fall, has caused disruption within the ranks of CBS News. Ellison has pledged that CNN’s “editorial independence will absolutely be maintained.”