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Comment by o0-0o | Hacker News Reader

Trump said today, in a speech in Gettysburg, PA, that if he becomes president, he will work to block this transaction because it consolidates too much power.

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Yes, no conflict of interest there at all. He's right, but for the the wrong reasons and motivations.

How would a real estate investor have a conflict of interest in regards to a telecom merger?

If you want to talk about a conflict of interest in presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton has received at least a combined $1,564,708 in political contributions from AT&T and Time Warner. Additionally, AT&T's senior executive Vice President James Cicconi has endorsed Clinton.

This is not a telecom merger.

Trump has many more businesses than just real-estate and his content competes with the content factory that AT&T wishes to procure (Time Warner, not time warner Cable the ISP).

Though he's already had a run-in with TWC (not involved in this deal but I highly doubt that would matter much to Trump).

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/gossip/lat-hh16-donald-...

Everyone has endorsed Clinton.

> Everyone has endorsed Clinton.

Not everyone :D

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728645

I don't like it when Hacker News goes off on these political tangents, regardless of whether your comment was well-intentioned.

The comment is relevant to what is being discussed, and not a tangent - he is a candidate for the Presidency, which is an office that has influence on whether this deal will go through, and he did say that. Saying Trump is human garbage would be a tangent.

We needed Teddy Roosevelt trust busting like that 7 years ago, preferably from someone without a lot of money in competitors of Time Warner (although Teddy wasn't the poorest chap).

We needed Bill Clinton not to deregulate telecommunications. One of the many things we needed him not to deregulate.

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