President Donald Trump marked the death of CNN founder Ted Turner on Wednesday with a tribute that praised the broadcasting pioneer as "one of the Greats of All Time", and used the moment to remind the world just how far the network has fallen from the empire Turner built.
Turner, the brash billionaire who launched the first 24-hour cable news channel in 1980, died at age 87. Turner Enterprises confirmed his passing, AP News reported. Within hours, Trump took to Truth Social to pay his respects, and to make clear he sees a direct line between Turner's departure from CNN and the network's long decline.
The post was vintage Trump: generous toward the man, unsparing toward the institution. He called Turner "one of the Greats of Broadcast History" and "a friend of mine," then pivoted to the network Turner created and the people who ran it into the ground after he left.
Trump wrote that Turner had been "personally devastated" after selling CNN to Time Warner, saying the subsequent owners took "his 'baby' and destroyed it." He accused those who came after Turner of making the network "woke and everything is is not all about," The Independent reported.
That framing carries weight because it tracks with what millions of viewers already concluded on their own. Turner built something genuinely new, a round-the-clock news operation that, whatever its flaws, changed how Americans consumed information. CNN International, Cartoon Network, TNT, and Turner Classic Movies all grew from the same restless ambition.
Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav acknowledged as much. "Ted's entrepreneurial spirit, creative ambition and willingness to take risks changed the media industry forever," Zaslav said.
But the network Turner founded became something he barely recognized. Over Trump's decade-long political career, CNN earned a reputation not for hard-nosed reporting but for relentless adversarial coverage that often blurred the line between journalism and opposition research. Trump called the network "fake news," "terrible," and "the enemy of the people" at various points, accusing its journalists of fabricating "phony stories."
Trump and Turner moved in overlapping media and financial circles in the 1980s, when both men were building empires that ran on audacity and instinct. That shared history came through in Trump's tribute.
"Whenever I needed him, he was there, always willing to fight for a good cause."
The president described Turner as a personal friend, not just a business acquaintance. That distinction matters. Trump does not hand out personal praise casually, and the warmth of his words stood in deliberate contrast to the cold assessment he offered of what CNN became after Turner's exit.
Trump's willingness to engage with CNN's journalists directly even while criticizing the network's editorial direction has been a recurring feature of his time in public life. His tribute to Turner underscored the difference he draws between the founder's vision and the product that now carries the CNN name.
Turner was no conservative. His post-CNN years were filled with statements that would make any right-of-center audience wince. In a 2016 interview, he called it a "disgrace" that the United States was "the only first-world country that doesn't have universal healthcare."
At a 2006 Reuters event, Turner suggested it was hypocritical for the U.S. to criticize Iran's nuclear ambitions. "They're a sovereign state. We have 28,000. Why can't they have 10?" he said. "We don't say anything about Israel, they've got 100 of them approximately, or India or Pakistan or Russia."
In a 2008 PBS interview, Turner warned that without action on rising temperatures, most of the world's population would die and survivors would become "cannibals." He argued American families should limit themselves to two children each. These were not fringe asides; they reflected Turner's deep commitment to environmentalism and population control, causes that defined his philanthropic life.
None of that stopped Trump from honoring the man. And that, frankly, says something. You can disagree with a person's politics and still recognize what they built. Trump's tribute acknowledged Turner's views without dwelling on them, focusing instead on the entrepreneurial grit that made CNN possible in the first place.
The New York Post collected reactions from across the media and sports worlds. CNN anchor Mark Thompson said Turner "was always and will be the presiding spirit of CNN." Sports organizations, media figures, and public personalities all described Turner as a transformative force in broadcast journalism, baseball, and philanthropy.
Trump's post did more than eulogize Turner. It looked forward. He praised Larry Ellison and his son David Ellison, described as longtime donors and supporters of the president, as "wonderful people" who "will be able to bring it back to its former credibility and glory."
The Ellisons are positioned to acquire CNN's parent company, Warner Brothers Discovery, by merging it with Paramount. That deal followed a sequence in which Netflix dropped a bid to purchase Warner Brothers Discovery late last year. During Trump's first term, his administration had unsuccessfully tried to block AT&T's purchase of Time Warner, a move that signaled early on how seriously he took the question of who controls major news outlets.
The prospect of CNN under ownership friendly to the current administration is a significant shift. Whether the Ellisons can, or even intend to, restore the kind of straight-news credibility Turner's CNN once had remains an open question. But Trump clearly sees the ownership change as an opportunity, and he said so publicly while the founder's body was barely cold.
That bluntness is characteristic of a president who has never separated personal relationships from institutional critique. Trump's broader approach to policy conflicts within his own administration reflects the same directness, disagreements get aired, not buried.
Ted Turner pioneered cable television in the 1970s and 1980s. He devoted his fortune to environmentalism and reviving interest in professional sports. He built a media empire from scratch, took enormous risks, and changed the industry. Whatever conservatives thought of his politics, the man earned his place in broadcasting history.
What happened to his creation after he left is a different story, and a cautionary one. CNN's transformation from a news network into what many viewers perceive as an advocacy operation did not happen overnight. It happened gradually, under successive corporate owners who prioritized ideological alignment over the kind of broad-audience trust Turner originally cultivated.
Trump's administration has pursued consequential institutional changes across multiple federal agencies, and the president has made no secret of his belief that major media institutions need similar course corrections. His tribute to Turner was, in that sense, both a farewell and a thesis statement.
The president has also continued to act on a range of domestic priorities, including executive orders aimed at veterans' mental health, even as he weighed in on Turner's passing. The pace of his public engagement has not slowed.
Turner deserved the tribute he received. He was a builder, flawed, opinionated, sometimes reckless in his public statements, but undeniably a man who made something real. Trump recognized that without hesitation.
But the sharpest line in the president's post was not the praise for Turner. It was the implicit verdict on everyone who came after him. Turner built CNN. The people who inherited it turned it into something he barely recognized. And now, with new ownership on the horizon, the question is whether anyone can undo the damage.
Ted Turner created a news network. His successors created an argument. The audience noticed the difference long before the obituaries were written.
