{"id":166502,"date":"2025-12-03T19:03:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T19:03:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/166502\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T19:03:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T19:03:07","slug":"trump-treasury-secretary-defends-paramount-rush-hour-4-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/166502\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Treasury Secretary Defends Paramount ‘Rush Hour 4’ Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTreasury Secretary Scott Bessent was grilled by New York Times Dealbook author Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday about President Trump\u2019s apparent effort to persuade Paramount<\/a> to green light Rush Hour<\/a> 4<\/a>, a buddy comedy sequel from director Brett Ratner.<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump reportedly told Larry Ellison about his desire to see the film get made, and Paramount, run by his son David Ellison<\/a>, has since agreed to distribute it. <\/p>\n

\n\tSorkin, interviewing Bessent at his annual Dealbook Summit in New York, framed the ask as part of a larger trend of companies with business before the government seeking to placate the president.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere is news in the past week that [Ellison] has greenlit a film called Rush Hour 4 by Brett Ratner, because the president effectively suggested, or said, this is one of my favorite films, and I want to do this for Brett,\u201d Sorkin said. \u201cAnd so now [Ellison] is doing this and people look at this and say that the president is trying to push him, and they are trying to placate the president.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what does Bessent think of that chatter?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNot much,\u201d he said, adding that \u201ca transaction of that size\u201d is irrelevant to how the government operates.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe president could have said, I think it will be a great movie,\u201d Bessent added. \u201cI have no idea, I wasn\u2019t there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThings did get tense, however, with Sorkin pressing Bessent on companies making decisions not necessarily for business reasons, but to help get deals across.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cDo you think it\u2019s appropriate for the President to be to be asking them to do something like that? Is it appropriate for a company to be doing something on the other end to placate the president?\u201d Sorkin asked.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know, the Obamas have a contract with Netflix, is that appropriate?\u201d Bessent replied, with Sorkin noting that they signed that deal after leaving office.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese things are very complicated\u2026 if you want to start pulling on every thread, then let\u2019s start pulling at every thread on where Chuck Schumer\u2019s children work, let\u2019s pull on every thread of where his staffers work,\u201d Bessent said, before ripping into the Times, saying that it is no longer the paper of record, and that he doesn\u2019t read it anymore. He does, however, still watch Sorkin on CNBC, where he co-hosts Squawk Box.<\/p>\n

\n\tDavid Ellison was scheduled to be interviewed at the summit, but had to back out because he is \u201cnegotiating as we speak\u201d for Warner Bros. Discovery, Sorkin told the crowd of power players. Instead, Sorkin said that David agreed to return next year, joined onstage by his father.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was grilled by New York Times Dealbook author Andrew Ross Sorkin Wednesday about President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":166503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[11948,65,156,409,111,139,69,421,102180],"class_list":{"0":"post-166502","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-david-ellison","9":"tag-donald-trump","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-movies","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-paramount","16":"tag-rush-hour"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}