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Could Trump Take Hollywood’s Backend?

After successfully squeezing Paramount, ABC, Nvidia, and Intel for payoffs, public genuflection, and profit participation, the president is now working to assert control of the patent and copyright system, too. What’s to stop him from setting up a toll booth for Hollywood I.P.?

Shira Perlmutter
Perlmutter’s attorneys, led by Donald Verrilli, have warned the D.C. Circuit that if Trump’s “unlawful takeover” is allowed to stand, the Senate parliamentarian could be next on the chopping block. Photo: SOPA Images Limited/Courtesy of Alamy
Eriq Gardner
August 26, 2025

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Could the next Superman or Avengers movie help underwrite the national debt? Stay with me here, because it’s not as outlandish as it seems. Last week, after Donald Trump boasted that Intel would hand the U.S. government a 10 percent stake—worth some $9 billion—as the price of receiving billions in grant money from the CHIPS Act, I started to connect some dots. Just today, when asked whether his administration would try to take stakes in other companies, Trump didn’t hesitate: “I want to try and get as much as I can,” he said. “There will be other cases.”