The Justice Department is seeking major concessions before approving one of the biggest media deals in history — AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner — according to people familiar with the matter.

DOJ has called for AT&T and Time Warner to either sell Turner Broadcasting — the group of cable networks that includes TBS, TNT, and CNN — or to offload its DirecTV unit, according to one of the people familiar. At a meeting on Monday, the DOJ told AT&T executives that either Turner or DirecTV had to go, which AT&T executives said was a nonstarter, this person said.

Some executives at the companies are viewing the stipulation as a political barb aimed directly at CNN, which President Donald Trump has frequently demonized as “fake news.”

“The pro-business, pro-commerce Republican administration objects to a vertical integration with 40 years of legal precedent,” said one executive familiar with the negotiations.

Reports on Wednesday also said that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson had offered to sell CNN, which the executive has denied. Speaking at a Dealbook conference on Thursday, Stephenson said that he had “never been told that the price of getting a deal done was selling CNN.” He added that “there is no intention that we would ever sell CNN.”

“It’s a big deal to suggest that I walked in there and volunteered to sell a really important asset to get the deal done,” Stephenson said. “To have somebody come out to say we’re offering up to sell CNN to get a deal done, it’s a painful situation that needs to be addressed.”