I Hope Netflix Knows a Guy Who
Knows a Guy
How do
we get business leaders to act in their own best interests, even as their greed
and indifference keeps them from doing anything?
EXPERT OPINION BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS @HOWARDTULLMAN1
Dec 29,
2025
I’ve pretty much
abandoned any hope that you can have an intelligent talk with any of your
former business associates about the merits of any of the programs, policies or
orders flying out of the Oval Office, or even be certain who is authoring and
issuing these diktats in the name of a demonstrably illiterate emperor. The sad
truth is that so many formerly rational and reasonable people are now MAGA folk
who are still trying to defend the cruelty, wretched excesses, despicable
slanders of the dead, flagrant thefts and grifting, narcissistic branding and
destruction of historic buildings for its own sake that are the hallmarks of
the second Trump regime.
I’m just praying that
some day soon it’s going to dawn on a critical mass of them that it’s only a
matter of time before it’s their own butts and businesses in the sling, because
what comes around goes around, and everyone knows that no one is safe from the
greed, jealousy and hate that thrives these days in our nation’s capital.
I hope that these
entrepreneurs, owners and operators know a guy who knows a guy or that, like
Netflix at the moment, they’re running around furiously looking for such a
person who’s happily connected, corrupt and complicit. Because that’s what
doing business in the U.S. for any large, regulated company has come down
to–it’s a mob and gangster mentality. You need a fixer with a checkbook and
access to Trump or you’re just as likely to be the next item on the menu. When
you get in a cage with a tiger, you’re not a visitor, you’re eventually lunch.
It’s media and entertainment right now, and paid-for pardons galore of course,
but don’t think any industry is safe or isolated from these crooks and creeps.
After all, they’ve watched Putin, Orban and their acolytes run this program
over and over again. You can’t reason with a tiger when your head is in its
mouth.
I’m not talking simply
about the cultists who buy every sick word out of the mouths of these crooked
cabinet members, vengeful regulatory heads, and other pathetic and punitive
agency executives. Unfortunately, the venom and poison spewed daily by the Orange
Monster and his band of enablers, sycophants and flunkies has spread so broadly
across the entire political spectrum that there’s virtually no one left in the
business world who still calls themselves Republicans and who are willing to
have any honest discussion at all about what’s going on right before our eyes
in Washington. But they all know in the back of their heads that Trump’s
favorite fable has always been about the tender-hearted woman who invites the
snake home and ends up being bitten. That’s why all the
tech CEOs prancing around the White House with blank stares and fake smiles
actually look like they’re walking on eggshells. They’re just waiting for the
next shoe to drop and hoping that it’s not a boot on their respective throats.
Of course, this
continued pattern of delusion, studied ignorance and abject avoidance is
largely because these makers and mavens foolishly continue to believe that
their own lives and businesses won’t be impacted or harmed by the demented
craziness, the TACO tariffs, the wanton destruction and hollowing out of entire
government agencies—not to mention the constant din of the drums of war. They
must be able to see that no one has the slightest idea from day to day of what
insanity to expect next from Trump.
They also know that
stability and predictability have always been essential attributes of our
economy, stock market, and trade policies. But as long as a dozen or so tech
and AI-centric story stocks keep driving the
stock indices to new heights, they’ll keep on ignoring the underlying fragility
of our economy and think that everything will be business as usual—if they just
keep their heads down and mouths shut. After all, it’s the nail that’s sticking
up which always gets pounded into the floor.
But my real concern is
two-fold. First, can we do anything to wake these folks up and explain to them
that they don’t have to be patriots or liberals to understand that the
continued damage and destruction of our laws, institutions, fundamental
beliefs, and actual economy are no longer simply debatable “political” issues;
they’re existential concerns for all of us, regardless of our political
leanings. As my friend Bill McGowan said long ago, “These guys have great
loyalty to their businesses, but their number one loyalty is to their own
tush.” How do we get them to act in their own best interests even as their
greed and indifference keeps them from doing anything?
And second, what do we
say to teach the new business builders and the next generations of
entrepreneurs about how the world works when honesty, effort, commitment,
integrity, the laws and truth simply no longer matter, when winning by any
means is all that counts, and when any issue or problem you may encounter along
the way that can be solved with a check or a timely donation isn’t a problem at
all? No longer do you work your butt off and build your business to success;
you bribe and buy your way there through crooked politicians, rotten
regulators, and agencies governing and ruling according to the latest threats,
demands and flatulent formulations from D.C. A material part of every business
calculation will now have to be the cost of paying fixers, agents and middlemen
to keep the intrusive and venal government off your back or to sic these fake
regulators on your competition.
Netflix’s owners and
managers must be sweating bullets right now and looking desperately for help
and leverage as they try to complete their acquisition of Warner Bros.
Discovery in the face of looming and corrupt opposition and promised
interference from the Trump administration and Trump himself, as well as
competition from the Ellison family who have contributed millions of dollars to
Trump over many years and who have already assured Trump that their successful
acquisition of WBD and its “independent” subsidiary CNN will quickly and
completely shut down one of the last viable media vehicles for criticizing him,
just as they have already done with CBS.
It’s increasingly
difficult as the new year looms to be hopeful and optimistic that things will
improve any time soon but there is one thing we can rely upon in watching all
of these greed heads circle around each other and constantly fight over the
spoils: if you count on self-interest, not self-sacrifice, from these people,
you will never be disappointed.
Feeding the insatiable
monsters heading our country at the moment is an exponentially more difficult
task. Hopefully, they will eventually turn on and consume each other as we’ve
seen with the regularly disappearing Russian oligarchs who are apparently the
world’s most accident-prone individuals. Those who foolishly seek power by
riding the back of the tiger often end up inside.
