Ted Sarandos To Meet With Donald Trump This Week At Mar-A-Lago As Media Pilgrimages Continue
Earlier this year, Ted Sarandos backed a winner in new Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman, and now the Netflix co-CEO is heading to Florida to make friends in even higher places.
One day after Donald Trump bragged in a Mar-a-Lago press conference that “everybody wants to be my friend,” Sarandos will be breaking bread with the President-elect, sources close to the situation have confirmed for Deadline.
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Neither Netflix nor the Trump transition team replied to requests for comment on the scheduled Tuesday sit-down. If and when they do, this post will be updated.
Having scored a $15 million payout and an apology from ABC News this weekend to settle a defamation suit Trump had hit the Disney-owned outlet and anchor George Stephanopoulos with, the former and future POTUS has indicated pretty strongly he intends to sue more and more media organizations even after he gets back in the Oval Office.
“We have to straighten out our press,” he said speaking before noticeably respectful reporters Monday. “Our press is very corrupt, almost as corrupt as our elections,” Trump added, while listing off outlets he doesn’t like (CBS’ 60 Minutes, the Des Moines Register) and those he does (aka Fox News hosts past and present like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity).
While Sarandos and spouse Nicole Avant, America’s Ambassador to the Bahamas during the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency, have long been deep pocketed donors to the Democratic Party, the pilgrimage by the streaming boss follows a long line of media executives kissing the Trump ring in recent days. Former Trump antagonists like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, Apple’s Tim Cook and today TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew have schlepped to Trump’s Florida residence to curry favor. First Buddy, world’s richest man and now Twitter owner Elon Musk is said to have sat in on some of the sessions.
Putting their money where their mouths are, Zuckerberg and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who is set to sit with Trump before Christmas, have both donated $1 million to the 45th and 47th President’s inaugural fund. Musk’s ex-pal and now foe OpenAI chief Sam Altman has put up almost a million bucks for Trump’s second swearing in.
The shift in MSM POV began even before Trump got back in, as Washington Post owner Bezos, like LA Times‘ owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, pulled written endorsements by the paper of VP Kamala Harris in the weeks before the election. While the billionaires insisted they wanted balance and a return to a non-endorsements policy, the moves were widely seen as preemptive attempts to curry favor.
For those of you who remember the former Celebrity Apprentice host’s first term, Trump had a rocky (to put it politely) relationship with MSM and Big Tech.
TikTok in particular felt the pain.
Citing national security concerns about Chinese ownership of TikTok, Trump unsuccessfully tried to have the platform banned back in 2020. Now as TikTok asked the Supreme Court to throw them a lifeline before a January 19 sell deadline, Trump says he has “warm feelings” towards the app. Today and in recent months, Trump has also said he is considering putting the boots to an almost certain banning of the platform by the Biden administration.
Because the enemy of your enemy is almost always your friend.
With that, Netflix founder Reed Hastings, who gave big bucks to Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed White House campaign this year, doesn’t look like he’s heading to Mar-a-Lago anytime soon, I’m told. Yet, with that 60 Minutes lawsuit looming, don’t be surprised if soon-to-be new Paramount owner David Ellison and his dad Oracle kingpin Larry Ellison are jetting over to the Sunshine State soon-ish.
CNN Media reporter Alayna Treene first reported the news of the Trump/Sarandos meeting.
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