Tampons in the company’s men’s washroom led Republican congressmen to think Netflix was far more left-wing than they tried to portray themselves during the streamer’s congressional evaluation for its bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, reports now say.
Netflix invited a contingent of GOP congressmen to its headquarters to woo them into signing onto its now aborted plans to buy Warners. The goal was to convince the Republicans that Netflix wasn’t a bastion of left-wing, hardcore, woke ideology.
But the tampons in the men’s room didn’t seem to help a bit.
There were plenty of other factors that ultimately led to Netflix bowing out of its offer to buy the film studio, but the tampon incident was not insignificant, according to the New York Post.
“This is 2026, not 2020,” a GOP staffer told the Post, speaking as to how wokeness has waned so sharply since the height of its cultural powers. “What were they thinking?”
For the paper, Charles Gasparino noted that, “…price wasn’t [Netflix CEO Ted] Sarandos’ only obstacle. During the six-month bidding war, many Republicans in Congress, state AG offices and of course the White House came to believe that Netflix was seeking to create a monopoly in streaming — an increasingly important way Americans consume entertainment.”
The stumbling block for many Republicans was the long history that Netflix has of forcing woke ideas and the gay and transgender ideology into all its programing — especially its children’s programs. And Republicans were wary of giving Netflix an even bigger platform to promulgate hardcore leftism by allowing the streamer to buy a film studio.
Missouri GOP Rep. Jason Smith, who is chair of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is one of the members of congress who attended the Netflix tour. And after seeing tampons in a men’s room, he found the streamer’s claim to be politically neutral a bit hard to believe. Yes, the tampons didn’t help Netflix at all.
“Let’s just say the chairman was pretty disturbed,” the insider told the Post about Smith’s reaction to his visit to Netflix.
Gasparino explained that most of these Republicans “believe [woke] values are front and center in Netflix’s programming, and the tampon incident, as it filtered through the halls of Congress, became proof that the company wasn’t changing its politics.”
Netflix saw its stock tumbling during its bidding process to buy Warners. And after announcing it was stepping out of the bidding war, its stock rose. So, the streamer had a lot of pressures arguing against the Warners purchase.
But, yeah, the tampons in the men’s room really didn’t help at all.
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