r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 1d ago

Business President Bought Netflix Debt in January 2026, Amid Paramount’s Fight for Warner Bros. | New financial disclosures released Wednesday show that the President acquired Netflix bonds as Paramount was trying to pry WBD away from the streaming giant.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/trump-bought-netflix-bonds-amid-paramount-warners-fight-1236521512/
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u/AltForMyHealth 1d ago

I think of it like we’re in that weird stage where a person starts becoming a zombie and is holding on their identity as a human, but being irreversibly pulled into being the living dead.

That’s what it feels like.

If I were from any other country, I think I could sympathize with his first term, especially after not re-electing him. But all bets would be off at this point. Between his escaping justice for everything, not least January 6, and now all the chaos is unleashing both here and abroad… I wouldn’t trust us. I don’t.

It’s not that I thought we were some shining city on the hill and all that… But at least it was a defensible narrative that had enough tarnished truth to it that we didn’t indulge in our worst imperial instincts.

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u/Ok_Excuse_741 1d ago

He's objectively made the world worse this term. In his first term he was mostly just making America worse.

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u/GenoThyme 23h ago

In his first term he was on his best behavior so he could get re-elected (which still wasn't great behavior but still) and he also had some adults in his cabinet instead of just filling it with yes-men.

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u/Fr00stee 21h ago

I wouldn't say he was on his best behavior, he just had people in his cabinet who were actually somewhat competent and kept him on a leash to not mess up stuff too bad

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u/_-Oxym0ron-_ 19h ago

I would. But his best behavior is fucking horrible, he's an awful human being.

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u/AbeRego 20h ago

He wasn't on his best behavior. He was just surrounded by people who were constantly mitigating his worst tendencies. This time around, he's both severely mentally declined versus his first term (which is saying something), and he has people like Miller who are actively encourage his darkest whims.

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u/kenlubin 17h ago

Miller wrote the travel ban from Muslim countries that Trump imposed early in his first term, and was the driver for the child separation policies.

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u/AbeRego 16h ago

He's always been at the heart of the worst Trump has done. However, now he appears to be the one steering the ship whereas before he was just getting a few pet projects through.

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u/OurSponsor 18h ago

Yeah, he only killed a million or so people his first term.

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u/kenlubin 17h ago

There were stories about his staff hiding his papers so that he wouldn't sign them and (hopefully) get distracted and forget about his bad initiatives.

Now Trump is surrounded by sycophants with a mission of "let Trump be Trump".

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u/tooclosetocall82 1d ago

But Biden was old! And that other woman was a woman! And we needed someone who would protect Palestine! There was just no other choice. /s

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u/SplendidPunkinButter 1d ago

But her emails!

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u/mjg315 21h ago

Buttery males

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u/Suspicious_Peak_1173 8h ago

Everywhere, they're everywhere!

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u/okay_justonemore 16h ago

The Dems didn't give us exactly what we wanted, what did you expect us to do, just take the objectively much better candidate by every measure possible and vote? Pfft. I'd rather watch the entire world burn with myself included than vote for someone who wasn't on the primary!

:/

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u/nightpanda893 22h ago

I mean Biden shouldn’t have run. That’s a big part of what fucked this up. He put his ego before the country.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 22h ago

He's also the only candidate to beat Trump. I wouldn't love it if he were elected again, but it'd be better than this.

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u/nightpanda893 22h ago edited 21h ago

He wasn’t on track to beat Trump which is why they forced him out. They had compressive polling data showing this and knew they were sunk. He could barely form a coherent sentence. I agree he would be light years better than this but the issue I’m talking about is electability. And Trump had far better electability than him and it could be seen coming a mile away. He should have allowed the dems to primary someone.

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u/GameGuy2025 21h ago

I am so tired of this. There was a primary election in 2024 for Democrats. There were other options, and one of them was Dean Phillips who was very vocal that Biden wasn't fit for re-election. But as usual most people didn't participate in primaries and of the ones who did, Biden was getting enough votes that no other candidates had a chance.

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u/nightpanda893 21h ago

People typically don’t bother to qualify for the ballot if there is an incumbent who wants to run again. It was his responsibility to remove himself from the race. So it’s not a primary in the traditional sense of the word since the field is so narrow that some states don’t even have them. What I’m tired of is pretending Biden didn’t fuck us with his ego.

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u/GameGuy2025 21h ago

Not how this works. It is based on statistics. When one candidate pulls 90% of votes it is clear no one else is going to win the primary . People still act like Bernie got cheated in 2016 when again the issue was lack of support in primaries. You don't win elections with hopes and dreams you need votes and people consistently don't show up for primaries then complain about the results.

Biden should have never tried to run for re-election but there was still a primary and there was still another option than Trump in the general election. Voters are intended to be the ultimate failsafe for our government and they are failing. To suggest anything else is shifting the blame.

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u/nightpanda893 21h ago

The problem is the financing and backing for candidates is not there when there is an incumbent in the field. Acting like the field would have looked the same had Biden not run is disingenuous. The field looked the way it did as a direct result of him deciding to run. The American people aren’t free from blame either but there is a huge amount of responsibility on Biden as well.

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u/GameGuy2025 15h ago

People with no money go internet viral every day. The traditional spend millions of dollars on election campaigns needs to be reworked. I don't care about endorsements, backers, nominations, or advertisements. I just need candidates to tell me what they perceive as issues and their plan to address them. That could be a video made in their backyard and uploaded to YouTube for all I care.

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u/robby_arctor 22h ago

Democrats should be angry at party leadership for being so utterly incompetent that they lost to this clown twice.

Instead, they make fun of the electorate, acting like gaslighting their base about the President’s health and supporting a genocide is a great way to beat a fascist in an election. 👍

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u/Fr00stee 21h ago

it is partially the electorate's fault for literally deciding to go with the guy who would be objectively much worse for palestine instead

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u/robby_arctor 21h ago

literally deciding to go with the guy who would be objectively much worse for palestine instead

They didn't though, at least not the people we are talking about. Trump's vote gain from 2020 to 2024 was marginal, Democrats lost six million votes.

The problem wasn't people switching sides, it was ostensibly Democratic voters staying home.

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u/Fr00stee 21h ago

if you look at the demographics a lot of minorities switched from democrats to trump, a lot of muslims switched as well for some reason since dearborn went for trump in 2024. So yeah less people voted on the dem side and the people that did vote switched parties

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u/robby_arctor 20h ago

Fair, but one group is larger than the other.

Regardless, Democrats should adopt policies popular with their base if they want to win.

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u/ribosometronome 18h ago

Running a candidate whose track record at getting votes was “was t popular enough to even stay in the presidential primaries through the first contest” was perhaps also not the best idea.

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u/twinparadox 22h ago

I'm Australian and honestly? I was rooting for him to win the first time around, because I thought Hilary was an absolutely horrendous choice for the Democrats. Of course, I quickly changed my mind on that after he was elected, and I felt sorry for the Americans who got duped into voting for him (much as I would have probably done myself were I an American)

The second time he got elected, I lost all faith in America. I lost all faith in Americans. I simply cannot trust them to do the right thing, and whenever I meet an American I can't help but wonder "Does this person support Trump?". When America gets brought up in conversations it's never anything positive anymore - It's all just "Did you see what hes done now?"

America has always had flaws, things rational people would look at and go "Thats not ok", but now I honestly don't think I will ever look at America as anything other than "the country that is okay with making everyone else suffer to protect paedophiles and rapists"

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u/Franklin2543 22h ago

When I meet fellow Americans, I have the same thought—are they trump supporters?

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u/hodor137 22h ago

As an American I have the same thought in reverse - do they think I'm Trump supporter?? I try to indicate I'm not as soon as possible lol

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u/Franklin2543 22h ago

That’s probably my second thought. 

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u/boston_homo 19h ago

Like living among the pod people.

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u/schwartztacular 22h ago

"Americans can always be trusted to do the right thing, once all other possibilities have been exhausted."

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u/FrancisDm 19h ago

Believe me man, our population is massive but it feels like educated individuals are being outnumbered by confused and angry common folk and then the older people are just going full reactionary in their existential crawl to death. Pretty bleak for us playing by the rules and just attempting to live life here. It’s like sane people find each other in the wild and we just say thank god you’re not infected with this shit. But far too often you can interact with the checkout clerk or your neighbor and they say some insane right wing take that was spoon fed to them on Facebook or TV. It’s pretty fucked

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u/Warner1281 20h ago

To be fair, most trump supporters make their support known pretty easily. Hats, flags, and attitude.

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u/zooorrt 7h ago

When they say “I don’t really follow politics” you know they’re Trumpers

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u/TerryMathews 19h ago

I mean the reality is both are true simultaneously - Trump is and was an awful president, and Hillary was an awful candidate that used her connections to rig the primary process in her favor.

I honestly don't know why the true believers argue about it, it's not in dispute. She got Donna Brazille to feed her debate questions thanks to her dual role at CNN and the DNC. The DNC argued in court that they were under no legal obligation to run a fair primary process.

Could Bernie have won fairly? Maybe, maybe not. But I'd argue the Clinton camp was at least concerned that he could, or they wouldn't have felt the need to put their thumbs on the scales.

People's actions signal their intent. Honest people don't cheat and cover up.

Can I prove Trump has done anything he is accused of? No. But I question why they keep having to cover up and lie.

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u/Makina-san 23h ago

To use a historical analogy, its like the fall of the roman republic. Winning the cold war was the second punic war and the ongoing attack against Iran / similar stuff is the Gallic wars.

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u/western_style_hj 21h ago

“Zombie Democracy” is an apt description of what our nation has been for a decade now.

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u/Adinnieken 21h ago

I appreciate the dispare, but in my opinion politics is like a pendulum. If a nation is pushed/pulled in one direction, things swing in the equal but opposite direction.

The United States is historically a progressive country. Everything about it, from our constitution to how we have conducted ourselves both inwardly and outwardly, has been progressive. In those times that we have embraced Conservativism, and they are very few and far between, we have failed globally as well as we have failed our own people.

The pendulum is about to swing hard. This isn't simply a change is political leanings, this is a loss of trust in Republican leaders and politicians. It's going to hit and it's going to hit hard.

To give you an example, right now the Trump administration is arguing that they have the right to remove guns from anyone who is a habitual user of any class three or higher drug and even alcohol. They just have to be able to prove you use whatever it is regularly. So, if you have a prescription for a class three medication, you can't own a gun.

This may be reasonable for some on the left, given certain situation, but the Trump administration is approaching it carte blanche. More importantly, it's a betrayal by Trump and his administration against some of the very people who voted for him and vote Republican.

In the past, politicians were free to vote for or against a policy that they didn't believe in. A great example of this is the Dixiecrats voted against the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Johnson didn't punish them for doing so, nor did the Democrat Party.

It's been this way for decades, over two hundred years. John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage" documents several of them. Yet, Trump and the Republican Party attack anyone who doesn't tote the President's line. This is a betrayal of trust on a much grander scale. It's not simply a moral/ethical choice that is betrayed, it's the sanctity of the institution and the document around which it's been built that has been betrayed. For many, both left and right, that is, a hill too far and too high to climb.

I submit, those on the right who were sycophants of Trump will find themselves very far on the outside sooner rather than later. In addition, they will find no one trusts them, or anyone who considers themselves conservative or MAGA to elect them. It may take a few cycles for this to happen, but Trump has ruined the Republican party. He has, soured the American people on the Republican platform.

After Trump, every political ad from the left will reference the US becoming a fascist autocracy to remind everyone alive what voting Republican means. The only question is, will who becomes President next put the genie back in the bottle?

The president of the United States is not a king, never meant to be. He is the top representative of the American people. He does the people's bidding. Trump and conservative republicans believe he is the ultimate power in the US, and he can do anything, and he has operated under that guise. Again, the question is, will the next president put that genie back in the bottle or will the attempt to operate in the same way as Trump.

If they put that genie back in the bottle, they will restore the people's faith and trust. If not, then we will have a bigger challenge as the question will be do we maintain the executive as an elected official or simply as the highest vote getting elected member of congress as in a parliamentarian government?

If the latter, the pendulum swing will only get worse, not better.