President Donald Trump has warned Netflix to remove former US ambassador and national security advisor Susan Rice from its board “or pay the consequences.”
The stakes are high for Netflix: It’s in the middle of trying to execute a mega-deal to buy Warner Bros.
Rice, who served in senior roles in the Obama and Biden administrations, was sharply critical of Trump’s second term in office when she appeared on the “Stay Tuned with Preet Bharara” podcast in an episode published on Thursday. She made particularly pointed comments about corporations that “take a knee to Trump,” saying they could face retribution under a subsequent Democratic administration.
After being alerted to Rice’s comments by far-right activist Laura Loomer, Trump posted: “Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences. She’s got no talent or skills – Purely a political hack! HER POWER IS GONE, AND WILL NEVER BE BACK. How much is she being paid, and for what??? Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DJT.”
Loomer’s post highlighted comments Rice made about corporations.
Here’s exactly what Rice said on that topic:
“When it comes to the elites, you know, the corporate interests, the law firms, the universities, the media, I agree with you, Preet, it is not, it’s not going to end well for them. For those that decided that it was, you know, that they would act in their perceived very narrow self-interest, which I would underscore is very short-term self-interest, and, you know, take a knee to Trump, I think they’re now starting to realize, ‘Wait a minute, you know, this is not popular.'”Trump is not popular. What he is doing, whether on the economy and affordability or on immigration, now, is not popular, and that there is likely to be a swing in the other direction, and they are going to be caught with more than their pants down, they’re going to be held accountable by those who come in opposition to Trump and win at the ballot box.”And I can tell you Preet, you know, as I talk to leaders in Washington, leaders in our party, leaders in the states, if these corporations think that the Democrats, when they come back in power, are going to, you know, play by the old rules and say, ‘Oh, never mind, we’ll forgive you for all the people you fired, all the policies and principles you’ve violated, all, you know, the laws you’ve skirted,’ I think they’ve got another thing coming.”
Netflix’s pursuit of Warner Bros. would require approval from the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.
Trump in December said that Netflix had a “very big market share,” and that its potential acquisition of Warner Bros. “could be a problem.”
However, this month, he said he “shouldn’t be involved” in the deal and would defer to the Department of Justice to investigate the proposed merger.
Paramount, backed by Trump ally Larry Ellison, the billionaire Oracle cofounder, is also trying to buy Warner Bros.
A White House official told Business Insider last week that Trump “has great relationships with all parties in this potential transaction and remains neutral in this process with no preference for either bidder.”
Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos said on a podcast appearance last week that Trump had not asked for any political concessions related to the deal.
‘I expected it to be very bad’
In the podcast interview, Rice was critical of Trump on many fronts.
When asked what worried her most about the current political situation, Rice said:
“The thing that worries me, perhaps the very most, is the abrogation of the rule of law in this country, and the fact that, you know, we are now living in a lawless society when the authorities of what is an increasingly authoritarian state exercises, you know, personal police forces, to go and execute the will of the President and do so in blatant violation of American citizens constitutional rights, their First Amendment rights, their Second Amendment rights, their Fourth Amendment rights.””And when you have, you know, masked armed men busting into the houses of American citizens and ripping people out of their homes in their underwear and beating them and throwing them to the ground and putting them in cars and disappearing them and denying them access to counsel or their families, when you have the same people shooting American citizens in the street for exercising their First Amendment rights, we are in a very different place, and that worries me enormously.”And what also worries me, Preet is, you won’t be surprised to hear, is that we’re only at the beginning of what I think they may intend to try and that our very elections and our the fundamental elements of our democracy are profoundly at risk.”
When asked for her assessment of the Trump administration’s past 12 months in office, Rice said:
“Well, I expected it to be very bad, and I guess I would confess that it’s probably worse than I anticipated, but not because they’re doing things that surprised me. They told us exactly what they were going to do.””You know, recall Trump saying multiple times on the campaign trail, ‘If you vote for me, this one time, you’ll never have to vote again.’ Or his, you know, pledge to use the American military against the quote, ‘enemy within.'”You know, you had Stephen Miller, foreshadowing not only the use of the Insurrection Act, but potentially the suspension of habeas corpus and the imposition of martial law. All of these are, you know, they tell you, interestingly, where they intend to head.”But what surprised me is the speed and the efficacy of their efforts to do what they set out to do, and the fact that they have faced very little resistance from members of their own party, from the private sector, from civil society leaders and university heads and law firms and all of the, you know, the pillars of society, media — that have rolled over and played dead or hidden under rocks.”So I think the speed and the ease with which they’ve made progress on their agenda, which they laid out very clearly in Project 2025, and elsewhere, is what surprised me more than what they’ve tried to do.”
Disclosure: Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Business Insider’s parent company, is a Netflix board member.
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