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Credit: Inside the MagicFans were disappointed, but not necessarily surprised, when Disney announced last week that it cut a transgender athlete storyline from the Pixar show Win or Lose. After all, for those who voted for Donald Trump, transgender athletes in sports were one of their most important issues.
Disney’s decision followed its settlement with Trump over a defamation suit he brought against ABC News and George Stephanopoulos. Despite most legal experts and First Amendment scholars believing that Disney had a winning case, the company agreed to donate $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library and pay his legal fees.
Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos after he claimed on his show that Trump had allegedly raped E. Jean Carroll. Trump denied that he had ever raped her, despite paying millions in a defamation lawsuit brought by Carroll.
Trump wisely brought this lawsuit in South Florida, unlike a $475 million suit he brought against CNN that a judge threw out. Disney assumed it would be difficult to find a jury there to rule in their favor and wisely settled the lawsuit rather than let it go to the Supreme Court.
Taken in isolation, neither of these events would suggest a shift in the company’s policy; however, taken together, along with other moves from the company, it shows that The Walt Disney Company has made an internal decision to move away from any controversial political issue.
However, gaining the trust of right-leaning Americans may be difficult for a company that has been labeled as “woke.” During its first with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act, known by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis labeled the company “woke” and claimed that Disney was “grooming” children.
Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek said nothing about the Florida law until he was pressured by cast members at the Walt Disney World Resort and Disney employees in California. When he finally spoke out, he angered people on both sides of the debate.
When Iger returned as the company’s CEO, he too tried to fight the lawsuit against DeSantis, only to realize that it was bad for business in Florida. Disney and DeSantis ultimately settled their lawsuits against each other only after DeSantis lost his bid for the Republican nomination for President.
Disney learned a valuable lesson from its settlement with DeSantis, which has brought about a construction boom in Central Florida: settling is good for business.
However, for many conservatives, those labels stuck to Disney, and it has been difficult to shake them off, even if the company has chosen to move away from a political agenda.
Michael Binder, a University of North Florida political science professor who studied the Disney-DeSantis dispute, told the Los Angeles Times:
When you assign a private entity to a political team, then very quickly people will begin to view things in that light. DeSantis was using Disney as a political foil to make a case for his run for the presidency. That was not something that we had seen before: Governors and elected officials outwardly attacking private companies, particularly a Republican going after a company.
Disney’s clumsy dip into politics under former CEO Bob Chapek was terrible for business, especially at the box office, as Disney saw “woke” films like Lightyear (2022), Strange World (2022), and The Marvels (2023) crash at the box office. Iger has consciously removed political references from films this year, and Disney is having a great year with three films making more than $1 billion.
However, some critics will point to the fact that Disney made its jump into minor LGBTQ stories in terrible movies. It wasn’t necessarily the storyline that ruined the movie at the box office, but the films were just bad.
Last year, Bob Iger told CNBC that Disney should “do good in the world” but was an “entertainment first” company. It appears now that Disney has foregone doing good in the world in place of a money-making company.
Charles Elson, a former director at the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, told the LA Times:
Disney provides a product: entertainment. It shouldn’t be about politics. When you get into politics, you are making a statement. And when you get out, that also becomes a statement.
Ultimately, Disney knew it was a bad idea to fight with the government’s head that regulates all of your businesses. Iger also knew that ABC’s fight with Trump would have ended up in the Supreme Court, where he would have lost, jeopardizing the First Amendment rights of other news organizations.
Unlike other CEOs, Iger has still not made the trip to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and apologize, but that day may come, too. In its most recent annual report, Disney wrote:
Our businesses create entertainment, travel and consumer products whose success depends substantially on consumer tastes and preferences that change in often unpredictable ways. Consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brand.
Disney has clearly decided to move away from its political agenda, but with Snow White (2025) and an African-American Captain America (2025) coming early next year, it may be hard for Disney to escape politics and the “woke” label. But for now, Disney wants to get back to business, raise its stock price, and leave the politics to other companies.