Despite criticism from the corporate media, the woke left, and some of his GOP presidential campaign opponents like former President Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Nikki Haley, and Chris Christie, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has stood firm in his fight with Disney from the word “go.” Recent news about and announcements from Disney further lend credence to the viewpoint that DeSantis is winning this battle.
According to reports, Disney CEO Bob Iger recently announced that he wants to move beyond the culture wars because they weren’t good for the bottom line:
Walt Disney Co. CEO Bob Iger is promising to lower the temperature after the company stepped deep into the culture wars under his predecessor and angered many conservatives, according to an analyst’s note from this week.Needham & Company analyst Laura Martin wrote in a report released Wednesday that Iger told investors the day before that his primary goal is to “quiet the noise,” because culture wars are bad for business.That message was one of Needham’s key takeaways from Disney’s 120-person investor event at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday, when the company announced plans to nearly double its investments in amusement parks and cruises to $60 billion over the next decade.
Some of those investments will be in Florida, according to a new SEC filing from Walt Disney Company:
Walt Disney World figures prominently in the slides on the filing, including new cabins for Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort and a massive new high-rise hotel adjacent to Disney’s Polynesian Resort. Disney Cruise Line has a prominent place in the filing as well, and many of its ships sail out of Port Canaveral.
Click here to read the filing (PDF).
As the DC Examiner noted, the announcement of Disney doubling their investments was in addition to other Florida-related projects and plans they reaffirmed their commitment to two weeks ago:
Earlier this month, Disney reiterated its plans to redevelop the Dinoland U.S.A. at Disney’s Animal Kingdom theme park at the Walt Disney World Resort. The company also said it was exploring expansion plans for Magic Kingdom Park, also at the Florida resort.[…]Disney has seen recent losses in the courtroom, losing its motion to dismiss a countersuit from the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District and electing to drop four out of five claims in its federal lawsuit against the district and DeSantis.
In recent interviews, DeSantis has been peppered with questions about the standoff between the state of Florida and Disney, and as he’s always been on this topic, he was unapologetic in his defense of the actions he and the state legislature have taken against Disney.
In the below ABC News interview clip, DeSantis pushed back against who he called “Old Guard Republicans” like Trump, Pence, Christie, and Haley over their criticisms of his Disney battle, saying that “they basically always just bend the knee to the big, powerful corporations”:
In the below clip from Fox News, DeSantis responded to the report that GOP megadonor Ken Griffin, who backed DeSantis’ 2022 gubernatorial reelection campaign, was currently sitting on the sidelines in the primary due in part to his belief that DeSantis’ war with Disney is, in Griffin’s words, “pointless”:
DeSantis on megadonor refusing to back him over his fight against Disney: “I have 6, 5, AND 3-year-old kids at home. The idea that we are going to allow a company to come in and try to wreak havoc on our education system, injecting transgender ideology in elementary school, negating parents’ rights, that is nonnegotiable for me. We will stand up for our kids, we will stand up for our parents. And, yes, they’re the granddaddy of them all when it comes to FL politics, but I’m happy to stand in the way of that and push back. If we can’t get the education right, if we can’t agree as a society that it’s wrong to tell a 2nd grader that they can change genders, then this country is just not going to succeed…I stand by it 100%.”
Watch:
In summary, on this issue, it looks like Gov. DeSantis’ refusal to back down was the right call to make:
Hard to argue with that.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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