In other words, either Delrahim has miraculously seen the liberal light when it comes to vertical mergers, or he’s channeling the wishes, implied or explicit, of the “very frustrated” man who has made his feelings about the merger well known and could yet make him Sessions’s successor.

The government claims that the merged company could jack up prices on other distributors for must-watch content like H.B.O.’s “Game of Thrones,” and that it would also “slow the industry’s transition to new and exciting video distribution models.” But the arguments, Stephenson notes, are “bizarre at best.”

“One has to assume two things,” he says of the idea that the merger will lead to higher prices for consumers. “That [Time Warner subsidiary] Turner has market power, and that [AT&T subsidiary] DirecTV has market power.” But with roughly 10 percent and 20 percent of their respective markets, they don’t. As for the industry’s “transition,” has the government not heard of Amazon Prime?

In the meantime, companies like Google and Facebook are gobbling up digital advertising dollars. “How do we compete with these guys?” Stephenson wonders. “If we can’t take someone with less than 10 percent of viewership and pair it with distribution, what can we do?”

That’s the economic question. Then there’s the political one. Donald Trump makes no secret of his feelings about CNN, a Turner subsidiary. On Tuesday he reiterated his view that the merger was “not a good deal for the country.”

I ask Stephenson whether the government proposed the divestiture of CNN as a condition for its consent. He won’t say, citing the confidentiality of negotiations with the government. It has been widely reported that the government had suggested the sale of Turner as one possible way out of the impasse.