EXCLUSIVE: Ted Sarandos‘ testimony tomorrow in front of a pivotal Senate subcommittee looks to be strewn with MAGA landmines that are intended to blow up Netflix‘s path to buying most of Warner Bros. Discovery.
Distributed to the White House and others, a recent report from a spinoff of Project 2025 authors and Trump whisperers the Heritage Foundation trashes the Sarandos and Greg Peters-run streamer “as holding an outsized role in socially engineering millions of Americans into a predisposition to accept preferred leftwing ideological dogma.”
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Without ever saying Warner Bros or bid rival Paramount by name, the Oversight Project’s Fedflix: Netflix, The Federal Government, and the New Propaganda State analysis insists that “relevant federal agencies must scrutinize with extreme intensity any potential Netflix acquisitions of other media and entertainment companies to take into account the full ramifications of the impacts on American society and the health of the Constitutional Republic.”
Or, as Oversight Project chief Mike Howell told Deadline of Netflix picking up WB’s studios, HBO and streaming assets in an $83 billion cash deal: “I don’t want Netflix to get bigger at all. I want it to have less influence.”
Howell, a former Heritage Foundation fellow, added: “Our team has been tracking domestic propaganda for some time. This seemed like an opportune moment to raise this issue in the context of Netflix’s ambition plan to build the biggest political and ideology messaging machine in human history.”
“Pay attention to President Trump’s use of monopoly when discussing this deal,” a GOP insider says of the role the Oversight Project could play in Sarando’s testimony Tuesday. “That’s message the administration’s sending to Sarandos, that’s how they’ll put their feet to the fire”
Read the Fedflix: Netflix, The Federal Government, and the New Propaganda State report here
To that end, Deadline has learned the Oversight Project has made sure its Fedflix interim report has ended up in the hands of White House lawyer Sean Hayes (no, not the Will & Grace Sean Hayes) and Senate Judiciary antitrust subcommittee chair Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), among others. While neither the White House or Sen. Lee’s team responded to inquiries about the Fedflix report, sources tell me that the Office of White House Counsel and Senate subcommittee staff have been briefed on its findings and conclusions ahead of Sarando’s high-wire appearance in DC on Tuesday afternoon.
(L-R) Sen, Mike Lee of Utah, Ted Sarandos
Courtesy/Netflix
In fact, with its subtitle of “The Weaponization of Entertainment for Partisan Propaganda,” the report is tailored for the MAGA base. Full of talking points and and mentions of Stranger Things, the Lena Dunham produced Orgasm Inc: The Story of OneTaste, the controversial Cuties docu from 2020, and the Obamas produced American Factory, the 47-page report takes repeated swipes at any expansion of the streamer and its library of “leftwing and progressive” content. The report continues, “the consistency of this programming suggests there may be intentional coordination with activist organizations and alignment with progressive political objectives.”
“Unlike the first term, conservative think tanks are quick to provide the administration with the ammunition they need to execute policy,” the GOP insider states. “That, Fox, and social media amplifies it and then the administration reacts. It’s a reflexive loop.”
In that context, in a time of fatal clashes between ICE and immigration enforcement observers over violent abductions and deportations, the January 27 released document from the 2022 formed Oversight Project tosses Red meat to the likes of the highly partisan Sen. Lee. Citing a distinct anti-Trump bias in the streamer’s shows and movies, the Oversight Project bluntly labels the Reed Hastings formed Netflix as a company dominated by “highly partisan Democratic operatives and donors, and like-minded elites.”
Additionally, the Project and its Fedflix document proclaims its research reveals Netflix is committed to pumping out “FBI collaboration shows, hyper-sexualized LGBTQ+ children’s programs, and Russia hoax documentaries.”
As Paramount and Netflix bicker over how big the latter would really be if it owned the WB assets, both sides are extremely aware that Trump has long been close to Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount owner David Ellison. Trump once called the Ellison’s “close friends,” and the elder Ellison and Oracle founder has been a primary backer of Paramount’s now $108 billion hostile takeover bid for all of WBD.
At the same time, the former Apprentice host has met with “great person” Sarandos in recent weeks. Still, never hesitant to use the courts or a regulatory big stick to get his way, Trump has mused about Netflix already having a “very big market share” of the streaming industry and how it “could be a problem” if the nearly 130 million subscribers of WB’s HBO Max were added to the company’s current 325 million subscribers worldwide. At the DC premiere of the First Lady’s Melania flick last week, Trump told Deadline’s Ted Johnson “I like both of them very much” of Netflix and Paramount. And then threw in: “It looks to me like one of them is very much a monopoly if they are able to do this deal.”
Netflix did not reply to Deadline’s request for comment on the Fedflix report, which really takes the FBI to task too. A Paramount representative had no comment on claims that the company’s Chief Legal Officer Makan Delrahim had received a copy of the Oversight Project’s anti-Netflix document. Before joining the Ellion-run corporation in October 2025, Delrahim served as the Assistant Attorney General overseeing the DOJ’s Antitrust Division in Trump’s first term.
Paramount and Netflix aren’t talking, but Howell of the Oversight Project, which became independent of the Heritage Foundation last year, is very clear about what he wants Sen. Lee or another Republican to grill Sarandos with on Tuesday. “How do you guard against the ideological and partisan composition of your board in terms of influence content?” he offered as one line of questioning. Getting in the political trenches, Howell had another question for Sarandos: “Did the CCP have any role with the Obamas’ movie American Factory?”
You get the drift.
