At the height of the battle between the Florida state legislature and the Walt Disney Company concerning an education bill that many radical leftists incorrectly referred to as the “Don’t say gay bill,” Disney’s former CEO who headed up the company at the time, called Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and complained that he was facing “pressure” from liberals.
According to a report from Fox News, “DeSantis recounts the conversation in a chapter of his new memoir, ‘The Courage to be Free: Florida’s Blueprint for American Revival,’ which will be released Tuesday by publisher HarperCollins. The chapter, shared exclusively with Fox News Digital, reveals what Bob Chapek, who was Disney CEO at the time, told DeSantis as the fight over Florida’s education law heated up in the spring of 2022.”
“As the controversy over the Parental Rights in Education bill was coming to a head, Chapek called me. He did not want Disney to get involved, but he was getting a lot of pressure to weigh in against the bill,” DeSantis says in the book.
“We get pressured all the time,” Chapek allegedly went on to tell the governor, according to the book. “But this time is different. I haven’t seen anything like this before.”
“Chapek told shareholders that he had called DeSantis on March 9 to urge him not to sign the bill, which restricts schools from teaching gender and sexuality to children in kindergarten through third grade. Activists nicknamed it the “Don’t say gay bill” despite the legislation not using those terms,” the report continued.
“I called Gov. DeSantis this morning to express our disappointment and concern that if the legislation becomes law, it could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, non-binary and transgender kids and families,” Chapek went on to remark, according to FOX 35 Orlando.
A report published by the New York Post, Chapek privately spoke about his hesitancy to get the company involved in political issues in Florida, which is home to Disney World, in the months prior to the crux of the battle over the education bill. On a side note, is it not ridiculous that the idea of parents having a say in their child’s education is somehow controversial? God tasked parents with providing education for their kids and preparing them to function in the adult world. If learning something is fundamentally harmful to their physical, spiritual, emotional, or psychological health, parents absolutely should have the right to say no to that being taught to their children.
Despite the hesitancy from Chapek, the pressure from within Disney and from Democrats across the nation led to him taking a stand against the legislation.
However, DeSantis put out a warning saying if Disney got involved in fighting against the legislation, “People like me will say, ‘Gee, how come Disney has never said anything about China, where they make a fortune?’” DeSantis said to the company’s then-CEO.
The Florida Republican went on to say that if Disney remained out of politics, it would experience outrage for 48 hours after the bill passed.
“[And] when I sign it, you will get another 48 hours of outrage, mostly online,'” DeSantis explained, adding, “Then there will be some new outrage that the woke mob will focus on and people will forget about this issue, especially considering the outrage is directed at a political-media narrative, not the actual text of the legislation itself.”
The Florida governor went on to write that both Chapek and Disney “ultimately caved to leftist media and activist pressure and pressed the false narrative against the bill.”
“After the bill passed and DeSantis signed it into law, the governor was surprised that Disney chose to “escalate the battle” by vowing to fight the legislation in the courts. DeSantis signaled publicly that he would be willing to reevaluate Disney’s special tax district and favorable corporate agreements due to their insistence on ‘woke’ political activism,” Fox reported.
Other reports came out revealing Disney was pushing narratives that many on the conservative side of the spectrum considered to be “woke,” such as topics like gender and sexuality, in their movies and television programs. A producer who works for the Mouse House stated on a liked staff call that she a “not-so-gay agenda” and was purposefully adding queerness to children’s programming.
“Behind the scenes, I was not, as a father of children ages five, four, and two, comfortable with the continuation of Disney’s special arrangement,” DeSantis stated in his memoir. “While the Walt Disney Company and its executives had a right to indulge in woke activism, Florida did not have to place the company on a pedestal while they do so—especially when the company’s activism impacted the rights of parents and the well-being of children.”