Netflix CEO clashes with MAGA senator over ‘agenda’ to push trans shows on kids
CEO and chief content Officer at Netflix Ted Sarandos. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos clashed with a MAGA senator Josh Hawley after he accused the streamer of pushing “transgender ideology”.
Sarandos went before the Senate on Tuesday (3 February) to answer questions about Netflix’s merger with Warner Bros.
Instead of focusing on if the merger would result in a monologue, Missouri senator Josh Hawley focused on repeatedly questioning the streamer’s supposed “agenda” to indoctrinate children into becoming trans.
The Republican said: “Why is it that so much of Netflix content for children promotes a transgender ideology?
“Almost half of your content for children – I’m talking about minor children now, I’m not talking about teenagers, minor children – promotes a transgender ideology agenda.”
Sarandos responded: “Respectfully, sir, it’s because it’s inaccurate.”
Hawley insisted, adding: “On Netflix, you’ll find that an enormous amount, and I say this as a parent with three young children, an enormous amount of your children’s programming has this ideology and agenda in it.
“Netflix has no political agenda of any kind”
“Is this an advocacy position for Netflix? Is this an ideological commitment you have?”
Sarandos replied: “I don’t believe that’s been your personal experience,” to which Hawley snapped back, adding: “What do you mean you don’t think it’s been my personal experience? You don’t think that I monitor what my children watch?”
Sarandos added: “I don’t have any idea where that number would come from or what that would be.”
As per the Daily Beast, Hawley’s reference to “half” of Netflix’s content came from a report by The Oversight Project, the former investigative arm of The Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025, before becoming an independent entity last year. The report, which was circulated to the White House, claimed Netflix “holds an outsized role in socially engineering millions of Americans into a predisposition to accept preferred left-wing ideological dogma”.
But Sarandos assured Hawley: “Netflix has no political agenda of any kind,” later explaining that titles can be blocked should parents not want their children watching them.
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