‘RESPECTFULLY, SIR...’

Netflix CEO Clashes With MAGA Senator in Fiery Hearing

“Almost half of your content for children promotes a transgender ideology agenda,” Sen. Josh Hawley claimed to Ted Sarandos on Tuesday.

MAGA has decided that Netflix is the enemy.

The streamer’s CEO Ted Sarandos went before the Senate on Tuesday to answer questions about Netflix’s merger with Warner Bros.—but the heated exchanges were less about whether the merger would result in a monopoly, and more about the streamer’s supposed “agenda” to indoctrinate children into becoming trans.

“Why is it that so much of Netflix content for children promotes a transgender ideology?” Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley asked Sarandos on Tuesday. “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.”

Replied Sarandos, “Respectfully, sir, it’s because it’s inaccurate.” Hawley doubled down, claiming, “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.”

“Is this an advocacy position for Netflix? Is this an ideological commitment you have?” he pushed. Sarandos replied, “I don’t believe that’s been your personal experience.”

“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?” Hawley snapped combatively.

Added Sarandos, “I don’t have any idea where that number would come from or what that would be.”

The number came from The Oversight Project—the former investigative arm of The Heritage Foundation, which produced Project 2025—before it became an independent entity last year. Its latest task has been to circulate a 47-page report claiming that Netflix “holds an outsized role in socially engineering millions of Americans into a predisposition to accept preferred left-wing ideological dogma,” according to Deadline.

The site reported on Monday that The Oversight Project’s report was circulated to the White House and conservative lawmakers in Washington, who were also briefed on its claims that Netflix’s “FBI collaboration shows, hyper-sexualized LGBTQ+ children’s programs, and Russia hoax documentaries” suggest “there may be intentional coordination with activist organizations and alignment with progressive political objectives.”

The report’s claims armed Sen. Hawley ahead of the hearing, leading to the heated back-and-forth with Sarandos. Trump’s billionaire buddy, Skydance Paramount owner David Ellison, would very much like to buy Warner Bros.—especially CNN—outright in place of Netflix’s deal. Tuesday’s theatrics indicate that others would like to see the deal go Ellison’s way.

“Netflix has no political agenda of any kind,” Sarandos told Hawley.

Still, Hawley insisted, “On behalf of parents around the country, it offends me that Netflix is pushing this content at parents in what seems to be a very coordinated, thought-through, planned-out agenda,” he said, complaining that he can’t let his “young children” watch “anything they want” on Netflix “unless I preview it.”

Experts have long recommended that parents pre-screen any content their children will consume.

Sarandos told the Senator he should do as other parent users do and just use the parental controls. “We have state-of-the-art tools for you to manage those choices for your children and to block any title that you might be offended by for any reason,” he said.

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Eboni Boykin-PattersonEntertainment Reporter

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