Melania 2 may come early…
In case you missed it, Ted Sarandos is flying to the White House today to talk about the WBD deal, five days after Trump publicly told Netflix to fire a board member or "pay the consequences."
Read that again if you need to.
(Source: Giphy)
In short, the whole Netflix-Paramount-WBD cage-match has officially left the red room and entered the West Wing, which… shouldn’t surprise investors even a little. But the speed of capitulation here is still something. For context, five days ago, Trump hopped on Truth Social and demanded Netflix fire board member Susan Rice… former Obama official, current Netflix director, and apparently the woman standing between Sarandos and the deal of a decade. Trump called her "racist" and a "political hack”. Translation: Nice merger you’ve got there, shame if something… I don’t know… happened to it.
(Source: CNBC)
And now Ted’s making the trip to suck up while Paramount, backed by David Ellison (son of Oracle daddy Larry Ellison, Republican megadonor, guy who basically has a season pass to Mar-a-Lago), just jacked its bid to an all-cash $31 per share for all of WBD. Bigly. Keep in mind, this is also coming after Netflix granted WBD a 7 day cuck pass to field more offers.
But alas, Trump, for his part, said weeks ago he'd stay out of the bidding war. That lasted about as long as Sam Altman’s “no ads ever” promise. However, one Lauren Loomer post later and now sh*t has hit the fan while the DOJ is sniffing around Netflix’s proposal on antitrust grounds.
Live look at Netflix investors right now…
(Source: Giphy)
So yeah… if you’re reading this, congrats you now know what the epitome of a clusterf*ck looks like. Netflix wants the WBD studio and streaming assets. Paramount wants the whole company. One bidder's CEO is getting his Art of the Deal on with Trump’s Senate Allies. The other bidder's CEO is now apparently auditioning for a board seat purge just to stay in the game. The actual antitrust merits of either deal? Somewhere in the back of the line behind the political theater.
My take on the matter? Who knows what the actual hell will happen going forward. All I know is that this drama is entertaining and good for my job security (read: more articles to write over). Until next time, friends…
At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Netflix as mentioned in the article.
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