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Trump is right: Netflix’s merger would create a woke media monster

1 week 6 days ago


Popular entertainment has always shaped the public mind in ways politicians can only envy.

Percy Bysshe Shelley once called poets the “unacknowledged legislators of the world.” The idea surfaces memorably in the 1984 Best Picture winner “Amadeus,” where Emperor Joseph II appears more invested in micromanaging Vienna’s opera scene than governing his empire.

Modern technology has magnified that cultural power. Today, many young Americans absorb more of their moral instruction from Netflix than from teachers, pastors, or even parents.

Now Netflix wants to expand that influence dramatically by acquiring Warner Bros. Discovery, a media conglomerate that includes HBO, DC Studios, and franchises such as “Harry Potter” and “Game of Thrones.” The combined entity would control roughly a third of the streaming market and wield unprecedented cultural power.

Democrats understand that politics flows downstream from culture. Allowing Netflix to absorb Warner Bros. would give that worldview control over even more cultural territory.

The scale of the proposed merger raised concerns even for President Donald Trump, who warned last month that it “could be a problem” and confirmed his administration would take an active role in reviewing the deal.

Given the stakes, the question is not abstract. How does Netflix use the power it already holds?

Consider the company’s recent headline-grabbing film, “Queen of Coal,” described as the story of “a trans woman who dreams of working the coal mines” and must battle a town defined by “superstition and patriarchy.”

Inspiring stuff.

Or recall Netflix’s 2020 release of “Cuties,” a French film centered on 11-year-old girls twerking. The filmmakers claimed the movie criticized the sexualization of children. Perhaps that was their intent. Netflix’s marketing department missed the point entirely, replacing the original poster with one featuring preteen actresses in sexualized poses. Public outrage followed, and Netflix eventually apologized.

After George Floyd’s death in 2020, Netflix declared on social media, “To be silent is to be complicit. Black lives matter,” and then set about race-swapping characters across its catalog.

Zoom out further. A report by Concerned Women for America found that nearly half of Netflix’s children’s programming pushes LGBT themes.

Taken together, the pattern is unmistakable. Netflix uses its platform to advance a radical progressive agenda, and scrutiny only confirms it.

The company’s internal culture reinforces the point. Even by Big Tech standards, Netflix skews sharply left. In 2020, 98% of its political donations went to Democrats, compared with 84% at Apple and 77% at Facebook.

CEO Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder and longtime chief executive, donated $7 million in 2024 to a pro-Kamala Harris super PAC and $2 million to California’s redistricting effort last year. In 2017, Hastings told fellow billionaire Peter Thiel that his support for Trump reflected such “catastrophically bad judgment” that it called into question Thiel’s fitness to remain on Facebook’s board.

Hastings has made clear that conservative ideas do not merely deserve debate. In his view, they disqualify those who hold them from serious consideration.

Then comes the revolving door between Netflix and Democratic power.

RELATED: Netflix wants a monopoly on your mind

Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images

In 2018, Netflix signed a deal with former President Barack Obama reportedly worth tens of millions of dollars. The results included a slate of progressive documentaries and an apocalypse thriller featuring the line, “Trust should not be doled out easily, especially to white people” — a sentiment both racist and badly written.

Susan Rice offers another example. After serving as Obama’s U.N. ambassador and national security adviser, she joined Netflix’s board during Trump’s first term, left to lead Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, and has now returned to the company.

Democrats understand that politics flows downstream from culture. Allowing Netflix to absorb Warner Bros. would give that worldview control over even more cultural territory.

President Trump has signaled that he understands what is at stake. He has warned that the $82.7 billion deal must undergo rigorous antitrust scrutiny.

As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) noted, the merged company would exceed the 30% market-share threshold traditionally viewed as “presumptively problematic” under antitrust law.

But Trump’s concern goes deeper. As an entertainer himself, he grasps the importance of the arts. That understanding explains his hands-on approach to reforming the previously ultra-woke Kennedy Center. It explains his plan to commission 250 classical sculptures for a National Garden of American Heroes. It explains his appointment of Jon Voight, Mel Gibson, and Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors to Hollywood.

And it explains why he should not allow Netflix to build a woke media monopoly capable of doing more long-term damage to the country than any single election cycle.

Horace Cooper

Ukraine Security Guarantees to Include Binding Commitments

1 week 6 days ago
Security guarantees for Ukraine will include 'binding commitments' to support the country 'in the case of a future armed attack ‍by Russia in order to restore peace', a draft statement from ‍the "Coalition of Willing" of Kyiv's allies, showed on Tuesday.

Video shows wild car chase after police rescue 11-year-old from alleged kidnapper who tortured him at campsite

2 weeks ago


A harrowing video showed a wild police chase after a routine traffic stop that led to the rescue of an alleged kidnapping victim and the arrest of his kidnapper in Florida.

The Flagler County Sheriff's Office said deputies pulled over a white Ford F-150 on U.S. Highway 1 on Wednesday after a 911 caller reported suspicious activity. They found a 60-year-old man identified as Darnell Hairston with two male juveniles.

'A caller that knew his background as a sex offender with two children in his pickup truck called us. And if it wasn't for that, we might be investigating a completely different crime.'

When deputies separated an 11-year-old boy, he told them he had been kidnapped by Hairston and feared for his life.

"He told us that he thought they were going to kill him," Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly said.

Police video showed deputies taking down the man before the other juvenile passenger, a 15-year-old boy, got into the truck and fled from the scene. He comes within inches of driving over one officer's feet. When police followed the vehicle, he rammed one cruiser before crashing the truck.

The 11-year-old had been missing for three days and was treated at a hospital, according to police.

He allegedly told police that he had been lured to a wooded campsite at Flagler Estates, where he was choked unconscious. When he regained consciousness, he was gagged with duct tape and tied with an extension cord and shoelaces. He also said he was threatened with a knife and firearm.

The boy was forced to hide under a blanket on the floorboard of the truck while being transported, according to investigators.

Search warrants performed on the man's vehicle, his residence, and the campsite led to the recovery of duct tape, weapons, and video surveillance equipment. Police said these were consistent with statements given by the victim.

Investigators said the two juveniles were in a Snapchat group where the 11-year-old was warning others about Hairston being a sexual predator.

Video of the traffic stop was posted to the sheriff's office Facebook account.

RELATED: Man sentenced to 50 years for 'staggering' torture of his daughter that included force-feeding of laxatives

Hairston was eventually charged with kidnapping of a child under 13, aggravated child abuse, battery by strangulation, and robbery with a deadly weapon. He had been initially arrested for attempting to disarm a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest.

The 15-year-old boy was placed into the custody of the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. He faces multiple charges and is being investigated as a possible co-conspirator.

Hairston is being held without bond at the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility and may face additional charges.

"A caller that knew his background as a sex offender with two children in his pickup truck called us," Staly said. "And if it wasn't for that, we might be investigating a completely different crime."

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Carlos Garcia

Corporation for Public Broadcasting Votes Itself Out of Existence

2 weeks ago
Leaders of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a private agency that has steered federal funding to PBS, NPR and hundreds of public television and radio stations across the country, voted Monday to dissolve the organization that was created in 1967. CPB had been winding...

BLM 2.0 is HERE — Glenn Beck unveils the next extremist plot to destroy America

2 weeks ago


In the days leading up to New Year’s Eve 2025, the FBI uncovered and thwarted an alleged domestic terrorism plot dubbed Operation Midnight Sun. Headed by four radicals from the anti-government extremist group Turtle Island Liberation Front, the plan involved detonating improvised explosive devices simultaneously at midnight on New Year’s Eve at five locations targeting two unnamed U.S. logistics companies in Southern California.

While Turtle Island Liberation Front may sound unserious and even laughable, it is critical we keep a close watch on it, counterterrorism expert Ryan Mauro tells Glenn Beck.

“Turtle Island,” he explains, is a code word for the United States used by the majority of pro-terrorism groups. “The Native American tribes referred to the U.S. and Canada and Mexico as Turtle Island because they believed that the continent was created on the back of a turtle ... until the evil white settler capitalist came in and ruined everything,” he says.

Whether groups are Islamist, anarchist, or communist — or whatever anti-America sentiment fuels their crusade — they are all unified by the desire to “[liberate] Turtle Island.”

“It’s a way of calling for violence and the destruction of the U.S.,” Mauro says.

But their shared desire to see the United States fall is the only goal that unites them, Glenn adds. “This alliance with the indigenous people, with the Islamists, with Marxists — they’re all going to sort [the end game] out later. They just want to kill us first. They want to overthrow the government first. Then they’ll start eating each other,” he warns.

Right now, Mauro says, these temporarily united terrorist groups recognize that their anti-Israel campaign is floundering. In response, they have shifted their focus toward igniting “an anti- police movement,” primarily targeting ICE officials, but without totally taking Israel out of their crosshairs.

The Capital Research Center, where Mauro serves as an investigative researcher, predicted that these groups would target “companies that they can connect — even by some leap — to the Zionist infrastructure.”

“That way you’re hitting all the themes: anti-police, anti-Zionist, anti-capitalist, Turtle Island, and pro-Palestine,” he says, “and that’s exactly what [Operation Midnight Sun] was doing.”

“Although this plot was foiled, make no mistake about it — it is a marker in time for this new era, this new offensive that has begun,” he warns.

“How likely is this to become the next BLM movement?” Glenn asks.

“It’s extremely likely,” Mauro says frankly.

Just like BLM, which used America’s history of slavery to con well-meaning people into posting black squares, donating money, and joining protests, the new Turtle Island movement will draw on the plight of the Native Americans to fuel its death march.

From “terrorists” and “overseas governments” to “Turtle Island folks” and “Christian anarchists,” this is “all one seditionist movement,” Mauro says.

“Two things have to happen,” he urges.

One: “Put together a team to map out the Turtle Island intifada ... so action can be taken.”

Two: “[Preserve] history ... because the counter-narrative is going to require us to use historical documents to tell the truth of everything that went on with the Native American tribes — the good, the bad, and the ugly.”

To hear more of the conversation, watch the video above.

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BlazeTV Staff