United States President Donald Trump is calling for Netflix to remove former U.S. Ambassador and national security advisor Susan Rice from its board.
This comes as Trump continues to scrutinise the streaming giants' attempts to merge with Warner Bros Discovery.
Rice was the national security advisor to Barack Obama, the UN ambassador, and a White House advisor under Joe Biden.
In a post to Truth Social, Trump said Rice has “no talent” and called her a “political hack”.
“Netflix should fire racist, Trump Deranged Susan Rice, IMMEDIATELY, or pay the consequences,” he said.
He also reposted an X post by right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who called Rice and Netflix “anti-American” and accused her of “threatening half of the country with weaponised government and political retribution for choosing who they wanted to vote for as president?”
This comes after Rice said corporations that “take a knee” to the president would be held accountable if the Democrats returned to power.
Trump’s comments signal fresh intervention in the takeover battle between Netflix and Paramount Skydance for Warner Bros, just weeks after the president promised not to get involved.
In an interview with NBC News, Trump said he would let the Justice Department handle the matter, after previously insisting he would be involved in reviewing the deal.
Any Warner Bros takeover will have to be approved by federal regulators.
The president's comments come with a couple of days left for Paramount to table its best and final offer for Warner Brothers to compete with Netflix.
Paramount has attempted to secure a US$108.4 billion takeover of Warner Bros with a bid backstopped by a personal $40billion guarantee by Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle.
Netflix’s deal would see the streaming giant acquire both Warner Bros film studio and streaming platform HBO Max for $72 billion.
The deal between Warner Bros and Netflix has been met with pushback from the film industry and U.S. politicians, with concerns that it would result in Netflix controlling almost half of the streaming market.
On Friday, Netflix (NASDAQ: NFLX) shares closed up 2.17% to $78.67. Its market cap is $332.16 billion.
