US President Donald Trump has openly instructed streaming giant Netflix to fire or pay the price board member Susan Rice, putting a corporate boardroom conflict in the center of national politics.
Who Is Susan Rice? And What Did Trump Say?
The comments were posted on his social network Truth Social, where Trump described Rice as a political hack and claimed she needs to be fired immediately after stating she has no talent or skills, and wonders why she is paid such a big amount of money to work in the company. His request comes when Netflix continues to seek to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, a billions long blockbuster deal that is pending federal approval of the deal. The intervention by Trump brings back the politics in a high profile corporate merger, which is not common amongst a sitting or a former president.
The scandal has been triggered when Rice recently said on a podcast with former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara that corporations and other organizations who would take a knee to Trump would become the target of an accountability agenda should the Democrats retake power in Washington. Rice, who serves as a former US ambassador to the United Nations and a national security advisor to the previous president Barack Obama and Joe Biden, implied that the companies that are very attuned to the agenda of Trump may be subject to scrutiny or legal defiance in the future. Conservative activist Laura Loomer spread those remarks in social media, making it a threat to Trump supporters and requesting Trump to stop the Netflix Warner Bros. merger.
Did Netflix Say Anything?
Netflix has publicly not answered the ultimatum made by Trump, and it is not clear what consequences he imagines in case the company refuses to fire Rice. The battle over the merger is complicated: Netflix is competing with the other bidder Paramount Skydance over control over Warner Bros. Discovery, and the regulators have already raised the worries of possible antitrust problems in case of the deal. The line by Trump highlights the increased overlap between politics and the corporate decision making process, especially when the stakes in a business transaction are high and the national political moods come into conflict.
