Soon-Shiong met with Hines and actor Rob Schneider, both Hollywood celebrities connected to President-elect Donald Trump, to discuss a “MAGA-friendly” version of ABC News’s The View and “create a conservative answer” to the Democratic-friendly show, according to a Status newsletter from former CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy published Thursday. 

As an actress and longtime Hollywood professional, Hines’s extensive background and relationships in the television industry could be a vital asset to the proposed venture. Meanwhile, she holds close connections to Los Angeles, where Shiong’s influential newspaper is based. Given her marriage to Kennedy, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Hines also provides rare access into the inner workings of Trumpworld, the electorate Shiong is working to reach to boost his flailing newspaper.

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After Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot reeled from racking defeats in November, critics warned that given the left-leaning tilt of most legacy outlets, the results spelled the downfall of media platforms they said had lost voters’ trust. 

As the head of the liberal Los Angeles Times, the largest newspaper in California, Soon-Shiong responded to the election results by mounting a shake-up at his news outlet geared at reaching people outside of the Democratic “echo chamber.”

He announced a new media bias metric that would show the ideological bent of the newspaper, hired a conservative commentator to sit on the newsroom’s editorial board, and reportedly axed a recent op-ed from the board bashing Trump’s cabinet nominees. 

Soon-Shiong’s moves come as legacy outlets are facing increasing competition from alternative media platforms, with the Los Angeles Times being just one of a host of companies struggling to adjust to changes in the media landscape. 

After losing more than $30 million in 2023, Soon-Shiong significantly downsized the publication roughly a year ago, laying off nearly a quarter of his newsroom in an effort to slash costs. At the time, some subscribers argued the newspaper’s liberal bias might be partly to blame for its decline. 

“Maybe if The Times had a more balanced political reporting, you would attract a larger readership and increase subscriptions. I can’t imagine that you have too many Republican readers,” one reader wrote.