Disney CEO Bob Chapek now claims he wants the company to be “everything for everyone” after he caved to the woke mob and fought the anti-grooming law in Florida.
Speaking with The Hollywood Reporter during the D23 Expo over the weekend, Chapek doubled down on his decision to flight the Florida, which barred schoolteachers and administrators from discussing sexuality with children up through the third grade. In retaliation to Disney’s corporate wokeism, Florida removed Disneyworld’s special status, which essentially allowed it to operate as its own local government in Orlando.
In March, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) came out swinging hard against the Walt Disney Company for its CEO’s support of transgender instruction for kindergarteners.
“When you have companies that have made a fortune off being family-friendly and catering to families and young kids, they should understand that parents of young kids do not want this injected into their kid’s kindergarten classroom,” DeSantis said.
DeSantis took it further by calling out Disney’s hypocrisy, characterizing it as a greedy company willing to die on the hill of transgenderism while coddling Communist China.
“If that’s the hill they’re going to die on, then how do they possibly explain lining their pockets with their relationship from the Communist Party of China? Because that’s what they do, and they make a fortune, and they don’t say a word about the really brutal practices that you see over there at the hands of the CCP,” he said.
“And so in Florida, our policies got to be based on the best interest of Florida citizens, not on the musing of woke corporations,” he added.
Now Chapek is facing questions about how he handled the fiasco and how it has played out in public and within his company.
“You apologized to the staff on ‘Don’t Say Gay.’ That issue caused you a lot of problems no matter what you did. Do you feel that you have won back the staff’s trust?” THR asked Chapek.
“These are complex social issues where we absolutely, positively want to represent the needs and the expectations of our cast members, but we also realize that sometimes in such a divided world, there’s not alignment between what possibly large constituencies of our guest and consumer base are looking for in terms of the kind of content that they want to show their kids at this particular time,” Chapek responded.
Chapek then admitted that Disney also wants to have its cake and eat it too by pledging to ensure that the company offers “everything to everybody.”
“What we try to do is be everything to everybody,” he said. “That tends to be very difficult because we’re the Walt Disney Company. When you’re a lightning rod for clicks and for political podium speeches, the essence of our brand can be misappropriated or misused to try to fit the needs of any one particular group’s agenda.”
“We want to rise above that. We believe Disney is a place where people can come together with shared values of what an optimistic and ideal future can be,” he continued. “We certainly don’t want to get caught up in any political subterfuge, but at the same time we also realize that we want to represent a brighter tomorrow for families of all types, regardless of how they define themselves.”
“And the staff? Do they feel that from you?” asked THR.
“I think our staff saw how I stood firm during the ultimate barrage of attacks from certain political constituencies and, frankly, I think it was much stronger and much longer and much harder than they ever could have imagined and we stood our ground,” Chapek responded.
As Breitbart News has profiled on several occasions, Disney has plunged itself into pushing woke content beyond all recognition, whether it’s casting a trans “non-binary” actress in Marvel’s Ironheart or including a same-sex kiss in a children’s movie like Lightyear.
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