Ron DeSantis is claiming victory over silencing Disney following their public feud after the entertainment company openly opposed the so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill that was signed into law by the Florida governor.
“The big issue with Disney was they exercised a lot of political influence in this town,” DeSantis said in an interview with Newsmax. “And they tried to fight us on things like parents’ rights and things that are really important to the people of Florida. We beat them on that. We signed a parents’ rights bill and we’ve expanded protections and we’ve done a lot of stuff to go back and fight woke ideology.”
The Parental Rights in Education Bill banned the discussion of sexuality in grade school. Retaliating against Disney’s pronouncement against the bill, DeSantis revoked the company’s self-governing status. DeSantis said that following their “skirmish,” Disney had not been politically active since then.
“Since our skirmish last year, Disney has not been involved in any of those issues,” he added. “They have not made a peep. That ultimately is the most important – that Disney is not allowed to pervert the system to the detriment of Floridians. So that’s a win for the people of Florida.”
DeSantis acknowledged that he hasn’t spoken to the current Disney CEO Bob Iger adding, “The way I viewed it was we had the skirmish last year, we said ‘no self-government,’ we implemented that consistent with what I said in the campaign… and that’s where it was headed until Disney pulled this maneuver. So forget about all the issues we had with all that, you can’t have a situation where the Legislature has spoken and one company just decides to contract out against the will of the people.”
He continued, “At the end of the day they just have to understand — the party is over for them.”
Disney has sued DeSantis for “retaliation” and violating their First Amendment rights over free speech. More recently, Florida lawmakers passed a bill that voided Walt Disney World’s development agreement with a special district.