Netflix Users’ Money May Be Going to Kamala Harris’ Campaign, Here’s How
Reed Hastings, co-founder and executive chairman of Netflix, has donated $7 million to support Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign for the 2024 election. Despite initially favoring a candidate who could win swing states, Hastings shifted his support to Harris after President Joe Biden opted out of the race. The donation, which cannot go directly to Harris’s campaign due to campaign finance regulations, will support a super PAC that backs her.
Hastings, who stepped down as CEO of Netflix but remains executive chairman with a lucrative compensation package, has been criticized for this financial support amidst rising inflation and financial strain on the American public. Some experts link the Biden-Harris agenda, including the American Rescue Plan, to ongoing inflationary pressures, which negatively impact consumers’ discretionary spending, potentially affecting subscription services like Netflix. The article suggests that Hastings’s financial backing of Harris could be detrimental to the future of his company, as rising costs may lead consumers to reconsider such subscriptions.
Netflix co-founder and executive chairman Reed Hastings gave $7 million to support Kamala Harris’s presidential bid.
Hastings had been in the camp calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race, and obviously wanted to show his approval of the switch to the vice president.
“After the depressing debate, we are in the game again,” Hastings told the tech site The Information, according to The Wrap.
The $7 million donation is his first of the 2024 presidential election cycle.
The contribution cannot go directly to the campaign, because of campaign finance laws, but it is going to a super PAC backing Harris.
Hastings hesitated supporting Harris initially, posting Sunday on X after Biden stepped aside, “Dem delegates need to pick a swing state winner.”
Dem delegates need to pick a swing state winner.
— Reed Hastings (@reedhastings) July 21, 2024
But by the next day he had changed his tune, writing, “Congrats to Kamala Harris — now it is time to win.”
While Hastings stepped down as CEO of Netflix last year, he is still executive chairman and drawing a nice big salary paid for by subscribers to the service.
In 2023, Variety reported that in his new position Hastings is eligible for a $500,000 base salary, plus $2.5 million in stock options.
And a healthy subscriber base means a good stock price. As of Thursday’s close, it was valued at about $636 per .
So indirectly, Netflix subscribers are enabling Hastings to write his $7 million check to Harris.
Worth noting: She was deemed the most liberal U.S. senator prior to becoming vice president.
CBS’ Norah O’Donnell confronts Sen. Kamala Harris on her liberal record:
“You’re considered the most liberal United States Senator.” pic.twitter.com/khVbSUBYVE
— Mark Bednar (@MarkBednar) October 26, 2020
And while serving as vice president, and thereby president of the Senate, she cast the tie-breaking vote in order to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021 and the misnamed $1 trillion-plus Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022.
In a February 2021 opinion piece for The Washington Post, former Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote that passing the American Rescue Plan as the economy was already well on its way to recovery would “set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation, with consequences for the value of the dollar and financial stability.”
After it passed in March, Summers called it “the least responsible macroeconomic policy we’ve had in the last 40 years.”
Former Obama administration Treasury Department official Steven Rattner in a November 2021 article for The New York Times identified the American Rescue Plan as the “original sin” leading to a 40-year high inflation rate Americans are still feeling the effects of now.
Hastings does not feel the negative financial impact of the Biden-Harris agenda, but most Americans do.
The current fiscal path the nation is on is unsustainable and will lead to more inflation. Americans will then have to cut discretionary expenses like Netflix to get by.
So if Hastings cared at all about the future of his company, he would never have cut a $7 million check to Harris.
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