courtroom prove it. in fact, members of the public, members of the media, dozens of them have been standing in line for hours now to get into the trial that starts with opening arguments at 11:30 this morning. the question is, why the huge interest in this case? well, this case will have huge implications for the future of media mergers and really the future of business deals in general when it comes to this trump administration. secondly, this is the first time since the 1970s that the government has sued to block a vertical merger in court. so what exactly is a vertical merger? this is a vertical merger because at&t and time warner do not directly compete. at&t distributes the content in part through directv, time warner creates the content. the government here is saying that they are concerned that if at&t acquires time warner, which includes warner bros. studios, hbo and turner networks which includes cnn, the government argues that at&t could potentially withhold time warner progr
what s called evidentiary arguments, when both sides go back and forth over what evidence should be included in this trial. at&t is trying to argue the thousands of e-mails between at&t and time warner executives, that not all of them should be submitted because not every single e-mail is necessarily an official business record. it could be some chatter. unless you have a witness on stand, you can t talk about what the e-mail meant it s not worth having. the government is arguing some of these are had docs that might reveal that at&t knew that buying time warner would stifle competition. that s part of the reason they were doing it. there s a few other issues at hand in terms of evidence including prior statements related to other media mergers. all of this will help determine whose side will have the strongest case possible because if a certain key piece of evidence is thrown out by the judge, that can completely change either side s argument.
warner. almost some democrats including al franken are very skeptical of the merger. including donald trump as well. he said i m skeptical of huge media mergers because they can lead to higher costs and worse service for consumers. are you a skeptic of the merger as well? i share the concerns and questions. we have to get to the bottom of them. generally pro competition and less concentration i think is generally helpful. especially in the media. but this is just has been announced. i haven t had a chance to dig into the details but those are the kinds of questions we need to be asking. senator tim kaine, thanks for coming in. you bet. when we come back, we ll hear from the other side. trump campaign manager kellyanne conway joins us. i ll ask her some of the poll numbers that just came out. as we go to break, a light moment here with snl s take on the election last night. in the first debate, i set
all right. i m from ohio, my husband s from chicago. there you have it. one of us will be dead by the time this is over. this could be one of the biggest media mergers ever. at&t says it plans to buy time warner. this is not necessarily a done deal, so to speak. we ll explain. and what it could mean for you. make sure the germs they bring home don t stick around. use clorox disinfecting products. because no one kills germs better than clorox. the mistay connected.elps us the microsoft cloud offers infinite scalability. the microsoft cloud helps our customers get up and running, anywhere in the planet. wherever there s a phone, you ve got a bank, and we could never do that before. the cloud gave us a single platform to reach across our entire organization. it helps us communicate better. we use the microsoft cloud s advanced analytics tools to track down cybercriminals.
but back then, i felt like if we didn t do it, we would see what we have in fact seen, which is a mass exodus of refugees from syria that are dangerous to the refugees themselves and destabilize other countries. my concern is if we don t do that, we will continue to see an exodus that will continue to cause security challenges. quickly i meant to ask you this. there s a report over the weekend, at&t will buy time warner. democrats, including al franken are skeptical of the merger, including donald trump as well. al franken said, i m skeptical of huge media mergers because they can lead to higher costs, fewer choices and worse service for consumers. are you a skeptic of this merger as well? i share those concerns and questions. we ve got to get to the bottom of them, generally, pro competition and and less concentration i think is generally helpful, especially in the media. but this has just been announced. i haven t had a chance to dig into the details. those are the kinds of quest