 Alright, now back to that breaking news, AT&T and Time Warner, just a short moment ago. Federal judge gave the go-ahead for this merger, Andre Barlow is a former U.S. Department of Justice, anti-trust attorney, and he joins us now. Andre, are you surprised? I know the overall sort of conventional wisdom was maybe this would be the outcome. Nevertheless, the government stated and said that they felt they had a pretty strong case. So were you surprised with this outcome? I was not surprised in the outcome. It made sense to me. I actually sat through the trial, so I was able to watch the evidence presented at trial. So I saw exactly what Judge Leon saw. Okay, so the audience knows, the government's attorney was saying, hey, you go back to anti-trust rulings, 1963, Philadelphia National Bank, and this is compelling because I think it bleeds over to all other industries where regulators need not to have some ultimate reckoning as the social, economic debts or credits. In other words, they could focus on competition and the ultimate impact on consumers and rather than having to nitpick and saying, well, this is a vertical integration, why did this judge see it differently? Well, I think what he was looking at is right off the bat. One of the things that the Department of Justice conceded was that Direct TV was going to have cost savings from this transaction. So AT&T's acquisition of Time Warner, remember what it's all about, AT&T also owns Direct TV. Now, one of the things that was conceded at trial was that there would be cost savings to Direct TV, meaning that AT&T and Direct TV customers, about 25 million of them, would actually see lower prices. So that was conceded by the government. And I think the judge took that and he believed that that was really significant. So what the case was really about was could the combined firm actually raise cost to its rivals? And the rivals are the distributors, other cable companies to dish network. And the judge, what he saw there is that he thought that the government lacked sufficient evidence on that point. Well, Andre, real quick before I let you go then, then does this create a Wild Wild West scenario now, not just in this industry, but in other industries? And ultimately, are we looking at just two or three competitors and key industries, which would be the antithesis of capitalism for some folks? I don't believe so. Just because the government loses one case doesn't mean that it means that we're in the Wild Wild West and all deals will be cleared. Right. So everyone should be careful about what deals they bring in front of the Department of Justice. Losing a case like this doesn't just dissuade them from bringing other cases. They will do it whenever they believe a deal is anti-competitive. They will bring the case. They don't bring the easy ones. They bring the tough ones. All right. Andre, thank you very much. We really cleared a lot of things up. I appreciate it. Sure. And now we're going to talk about the market and business aspect of this. Melissa Armo, the stocks, who is with us. Okay. So the conventional wisdom is now the bidding war begins for Fox's assets outside of the news organization. Comcast perhaps will offer a bid in the morning, superseding Disney's bid. We're talking billions and billions of dollars and it's not just going to be this industry. So what do you make of this now opening the floodgates from a stock market investment point of view of a bunch of mergers going on right now? I don't think it's good. Do you think it's good? No, no. I'm not saying what I'm asking. I'm asking, do you think though it will spur a bunch of merger activity? Just like you said, I mean, tomorrow morning, they can put in a bid, we thought this Disney Fox thing was done. We thought it was a done deal. It's probably not now because like you just said, tomorrow morning tonight, that Comcast could come in with a bid and it could be bigger than Disney and then what's going to happen is Disney going to up it. What's Fox going to do? Right. Well, as a student of creative destruction, you know, we've seen major industries, major companies go out of business that were once untouchable juggernauts and a lot of time technology has something to do with that. So Netflix has changed the whole has changed everything. They've got a market cap bigger than Disney's market cap. What would a Time Warner and AT&T do to compete in the new Netflix world? Well, that's why the writing was on the wall that this was going to happen at some point. Assuming... You don't think it's good though? I don't think it's good. And here's why. It's like they're controlling the content and they're going to control the prices. The fact that someone who thinks the price is going to go down is absolutely ridiculous. If you have 25 companies out there, you can choose where you want to go and you can choose the content you want to see. Now you're going to have probably two, three, four. You're right. All of these mergers, it's like gobbling up, gobbling up, gobbling up. They're going to gobble up all the small, medium, even big ones going to gobble. What's going to happen next? Google's going to buy, Amazon's going to buy Netflix. Like can't you just see the writing on the wall where we have like two choices or three choices? And then here's the thing, they're creating the content and they're controlling the content. There are companies that were telecom companies, internet companies. They're delivering the information to your home. You're watching them. And now they're creating it too. The controlling the content. Do you think though that a Comcast, AT&T, and some of these other folks who control the old school pipes, cable, which is a massive cutcording, could survive in a world where Netflix and Amazon and Hulu exist and there's a steady stream of people who are leaving that old business model into this new business model. There was no way for them to survive otherwise. Well, that's the thing. I mean, exactly. They could find a way to survive on their own by creating their own or they can do something different where they're trying to buy these bigger ones. But I'm saying it's not good for consumers. Now, Time Warner is up tonight. But for the stock market, though, we could see a wave of acquisitions. Yes. And if you own the right stock, you're going to make money. If you own the wrong one, you won't. So it depends. Well, you'll know if you own the wrong one because they're probably already a stock that's in trouble. Melissa, we'll talk again real soon. By the way, hypocrisy completely off the rails, following President Trump's historic summit Kim Jong-un. Well, they're upset. Many people are saying this is not a success. Wait until we share some of the crazy calls next.