States have the ability to sue to block mergers as well as the federal government. See the recent 11 state lawsuit seeking to block the WarnerMount merger.

Do you have any evidence that you can just bribe your way past antitrust regulations (which are enforced by hundreds or maybe even thousands of attorneys across the political spectrum) or is this just how you feel because you don't like who is in the White House right now?

You think they'd only have to go through antitrust in the US? These are global payment processors, and the EU loves getting involved in this kind of thing. And no they can't just ignore it if they want to keep the majority of their customers.

Quite true. Or honestly, it's really barely about direct financial bribery anymore[1] - all the recent ones have just hinged on incredibly naïve (and easily manipulable) readings of how a merger might affect culture war / red vs blue partisanship.

For instance, CNN really doesn't matter, and was a tiny part of WB/Discovery, but of course Trump cares deeply about (hating) CNN, so all that was needed to win over Trump and guarantee his approval was for the acquirer to whisper to him that they'd do a housecleaning there. This lifehack would work for acquiring any company that happens to control any media property that hasn't established itself as a Trump cheerleader.

Note: I'm not even a Democrat today, but the pure and petty corruption on display definitely sickens me.

[1] though, back when it was, the bribes were astoundingly high ROI due to how cheap they were!