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July 12, 2025 - The Matt Walsh Show
26:11
Disney's Woke Agenda Is Worse Than You Think | Proof For Your Liberal Friend

Disney's initiative is no longer making wholesome family content. Instead, they're prioritizing their woke agenda. Send this podcast to your liberal friend as proof. - - - Today's Sponsor: Hillsdale - Go to https://hillsdale.edu/walsh to sign up for free access to over 40 online courses. - - - Privacy Policy: https://www.dailywire.com/privacy

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As far as Disney's concern of a white male, that's not who they're looking to promote is they're not considering any white male super shop.
Disney blatantly discriminates against white men in particular.
Eight months ago, Disney CEO Bob Iger publicly pledged to pursue the first option.
He declared that Disney would refocus its efforts on entertainment, not political messaging.
That was the plan, or at least the plan that was shared with the public.
But that's not what has happened.
Disney over the past eight months has apparently decided to double down on agenda-driven content to the point that they're now openly attacking their own fans.
It's a remarkable turn of events, and it's one that's worth discussing because this development is not unique to Disney.
And it suggests that wokeness, as we call it, may not be the best way to describe what we're seeing at Disney and other major corporations like it.
That's part of what we're seeing, but there's something else going on here as well.
It looks a lot like corporate mediocrity run amok, the private sector version of what we see across the public sector bureaucracy.
Unimpressive people with impressive sounding credentials who check the right demographic boxes are taking the helm of businesses and products that they don't understand.
They've insinuated themselves into these companies like a cancer that's evidently impossible to remove.
And even when the company CEO publicly tells them one thing, they're free to do another.
Now, to get a better idea of what I mean, take a look at this interview from the other day featuring Leslie Hedland, the creator of the new Disney Star Wars show, The Acolyte.
Now, I don't want to prejudice you in any way, so I'll just play the clip with no further introduction.
This is the showrunner talking about her new show, Watch.
I want to ask you both, because this is, I would say, arguably the gayest Star Wars show.
I think by a considerable margin.
And are you excited about that?
Are you bracing yourself?
Not that.
It's pretty gay, let's be honest.
Leslie, are you, how do you feel?
Am I gay?
Well, no, I know you are gay, but I'm asking, are you excited about putting this, you know, this is going to be a talking point?
Is it going to be a talking point?
I'm sure so.
Because nerds are gay.
Well, some nerds are very not gay and are very threatened by gay.
Well, that's true.
But in my world, nerds are gay.
Okay.
Was this the fun element of?
No, I don't think so.
And yet people have told me that it's the gay of Star Wars.
And I frankly into it.
No, I'm not.
I think that Star Wars is so gay already.
I mean, have you seen...
We'd be like, look how gay this is, and then send each other a reference photo.
And are you telling me, with a straight face, that C3PO is straight?
They're a couple.
That's what I think.
This is more outward.
I think it's canon that R2D2 is a lesbian.
So don't worry about the story or the plot or the characters who has time for that.
Instead, just listen to these two women call old Star Wars characters gay and then giggle like schoolgirls.
They're excited that this new Star Wars show will be the gayest Star Wars show yet, which is in every way the exact opposite of what the audience actually wants.
Nobody has watched the recent Star Wars films and shows and said to themselves, you know, this would be better if only it was even gayer.
No one has thought that, except for apparently the people behind this show.
Now, the only thing you learn from that interview is that Leslie Hedland is gay and has no respect whatsoever for her audience or her own show.
This is how Disney is promoting the latest entry to franchise they spent $4 billion to buy a decade ago.
And that has a lot of fans wondering how exactly she was chosen for the role of showrunner.
If her role is to push some subversive woke ideology, she's not being very subversive about it.
She's just angering as many fans as she possibly can.
And that's all this is.
And she's not the only CEO, the only one doing this.
The CEO of Lucasfilm, a woman named Kathleen Kennedy, just came out in defense of her showrunner.
Kennedy declared that if you're not a fan of how Leslie Hedland is handling herself, then you probably hate women.
Quote, I think Leslie has struggled a little bit with it.
I think a lot of the women who step into Star Wars struggle with this a bit more.
Because of the fan base being so male-dominated, they sometimes get attacked in ways that can be quite personal.
My belief is that storytelling does need to be representative of all people.
That's an easy decision for me.
Yeah, she really said that.
Storytelling does need to be representative of all people, says the CEO of Lucasfilm as she mocks her own fan base.
These people are so dumb.
They don't even understand the words coming out of their own mouths.
Representative of all people, really?
Are they going to have 8 billion characters in this show, one for each person on earth?
How exactly does that work?
Is storytelling supposed to be representative of all people, whatever that means?
Or is it supposed to be representative of the creative, distinct, creative vision of the storyteller?
I was going to show some more clips of these women, but it's honestly too painful to subject you to.
These are people who can't even communicate without descending into valley girl nonsense.
And they're putting together shows that they expect millions of people to watch.
Kathleen Kennedy was lucky enough to work with Steven Spielberg and Leslie Hedlund worked on rom-coms with titles like Sleeping with Other People.
So those are their credentials and they're considered impressive in the industry, I guess.
So they get to continue butchering Star Wars.
By the way, the Acolyte was released this week.
I think it was released yesterday.
And as has become a new tradition for Star Wars films and shows, it has a very high critic score of Rotten Tomatoes, like 88%, but a failing grade of 45% from the audience.
That is the dynamic we always see now with these things.
Joel Berry, who apparently subjected himself to at least some of the show, offered this review, quote, The Acolyte is a queer Marxist vandalization of the myth of Star Wars.
In the acolyte, the force is a metaphor for cultural hegemonic power.
The Jedi are a metaphor for cisgender white oppressors who hoard the power for themselves.
Yes, it really is that obnoxious and stupid.
The account Wall Street Silver offered this viewer warning.
Quote, the acolyte Star Wars new series streaming is very woke.
Number one, main character has two mothers.
Number two, main Jedi characters are all black and Asian, no white men.
And number three, only speaking role for white men in first episode is prisoners on a prison ship.
So Disney has decided to right the ship by ramming it directly into another iceberg.
And that's not to pick on the acolyte too much, although it obviously deserves it.
Because of the fact that Disney is now pumping out Star Wars shows on an assembly line, there's another one that I can mock as well.
It's called Tales of the Empire.
This one is apparently geared towards kids, and I guess it features a non-binary Jedi based on how all the characters use they-them pronouns to refer to this corpse.
Watch this.
I think we've played this once before, but here it is again.
If you can get through it, here it is.
Oh Oh.
*music*
They're still alive.
We need to get them to the ship.
We can save them.
Forget it.
Let them die.
It's not worth the trouble.
They were about to surrender.
Irrelevant.
The Jedi are a threat to be eradicated wherever they are found.
Oh yeah, we did play that before because I remember now.
That's the one where the bad guy, I guess it's a bad guy, kills someone, but then still respects that person's pronouns after having murdered them.
So that's nice, at least.
This is the result of Disney's big plan to focus on entertainment and not messaging.
We have non-binary Jedis and girl bosses making sure we have the gayest Star Wars ever.
And that's not all.
As Bloomberg recently reported, Disney is now banking on the upcoming film Inside Out 2 as the, quote, key to restoring the magic.
They think that this film, a sequel to a movie from 2015, is going to be a smash hit to the point that they're going to give it a 100-day run in theaters.
As Bloomberg reports, quote, if families show up for Inside Out 2 in the kinds of numbers Pixar used to see, it will reaffirm the studio's standing.
But if the movie fails, it will fuel concerns about the company's relevance.
And by the way, the whole article is kind of funny because it's all about how Disney, they've come up with their brilliant strategy to get back on track.
And their brilliant strategy is to do more sequels and remakes.
That's the strategy.
And of course, anyone reads that, they're like, isn't that what you've been doing the whole time?
Isn't that the only thing you've done for 20 years now?
Now, what is Inside Out 2 going to be about?
It's hard to say because it's not out yet, but after some Googling, I came across this headline from an outlet called Pride.com.
And here's their assessment based on the trailer.
Quote, the long-awaited sequel to Disney and Pixar's Inside Out isn't hitting theaters until the summer, but the official trailer dropped this week and it's looking a little gay.
Fans think Inside Out 2 is going to be gay as F. Now, how brave is that?
Are they also going to, they're also going to, I guess, gayify Inside Out, or maybe they will, which was kind of a middling Pixar entry in the first place.
Is that the direction they're going with it?
Who knows?
But based on the fact that they can't make anything that isn't gay anymore, we can assume that the answer to that question is probably yes.
If you've been watching any significant amount of Disney content over the past few years, there's a question that's probably crossed your mind at some point as you gaze upon the two lesbian mothers in the kid show Young Jedi Adventures or the non-binary Jedi in Tales of the Empire or the gay kisses in Lightyear and Rise of Skywalker or the communist lesbian witches in the acolyte or the prominent trans character in Baymax or the non-binary lake character in Elemental or the gay moment in Endgame or
the purple gay Cyclops police officer in Onward or the first ever biracial gay cartoon character in Strangeworld.
You may have caught yourself thinking, what the hell is going on inside the company if this is what they're producing as entertainment for the millions of people in the audience?
How dysfunctional are the inner workings of Disney exactly if they're so fixated on sexuality and race that they have to ram so-called marginalized identities into every orifice of their streaming and film shows?
What would it be like to actually work at a place like this?
You may ask yourself.
We don't have to ask those questions anymore, though, because yesterday, James O'Keefe, formerly the head of Project Veritas and now the CEO of OMG Media, provided an exclusive window into the inner workings of Disney.
One of O'Keefe's undercover operatives recorded an intimate conversation with a senior vice president at the company named Michael Gardino.
And it's simultaneously an incredibly shocking piece of footage in some ways, as well as at the same time, everything you'd expect it to be.
In this clip, Gardino appears to admit on multiple occasions that Disney discriminates against job applicants on the basis of their skin color and their gender.
According to Gardino, the company will look at a white man and decide, because of immutable characteristics that he can't control, that he is disqualified from employment.
In fact, on at least one occasion, this executive says that Disney higher-ups disqualified a half-black applicant because he didn't look black enough.
Now, I'll provide the usual disclaimer that, of course, I haven't personally seen all of O'Keefe's unedited footage, but here's some of what O'Keeffe aired.
Watch.
Certainly, there have been times where, you know, there's no way we're hiring a white male person.
of unspoken.
There are times when it's spoken.
Oh, There's no way we're hiring a white male person.
According to these videotapes, Disney blatantly discriminates against whites, white men in particular.
I'm sort of like well prepared for it.
I'm well positioned for it.
But as far as Disney's concerned, I'm a white male.
That's not who they're looking at promoting them.
You know, I've been at the company 11 years now, so I have friends in HR and I have friends in those divisions.
And they're like, look, nobody else is going to tell me this, Mike.
But they're not considering a white male's worth shot.
They're just not.
That's not who they want.
They even passed over a qualified half-black person for a promotion because they didn't look black enough.
We wanted to hire somebody in the department a few years ago now who was half black but didn't like appear half black.
And there was a creative executive who was like, we're not, like, that's not, that's not what's going on.
Right.
They wanted somebody in meetings who would appear a certain way and he wasn't going to bring that to the meeting.
I mean, it kind of feels like where At some point, there's going to be a lawsuit.
That's kind of how it feels.
Now, when civil rights laws were first passed, laws that mandated that businesses stop discriminating on the basis of race, there were quite a few businesses in this country that had to close.
In some cases, the owner simply didn't want to serve black customers or hire black employees.
In other cases, the business did attempt to integrate, but their clientele wouldn't stand for it.
They wanted to see certain races excluded from the whole operation.
And when that was no longer allowed, they stopped patronizing the business anyway.
And after watching this footage, for the first time, it's not hard to see how a major entertainment juggernaut like Disney could someday meet the same fate as all those businesses that crumbled in the aftermath of the civil rights movement.
You know, if what this executive is saying is true, then there's a very strong case to be made that Disney is flagrantly and systematically violating civil rights law.
Like in the most flagrant way possible, actually.
In this country, in pretty much every case, businesses are not allowed to deny employment on the basis of race or gender.
Race or gender can't even be one of the reasons why an employee is promoted or rejected or hired or fired.
You're not allowed to consider it at all.
That's the way the law is supposedly set up.
And Michael Gardino appears to realize that, which is why he says on the tape that Disney is likely to face a massive lawsuit in the near future.
Now, will the law actually be enforced against Disney?
Well, that remains to be seen.
We all know that for the most part, the civil rights law works in one direction.
It's rare, though certainly not unheard of, for white plaintiffs to successfully sue for workplace discrimination.
But in this case, there's a Disney executive saying explicitly on tape that in his estimation, the company discriminates on the basis of race and gender.
And as of now, the only response from Disney has been that Michael Gardino has taken down his LinkedIn page.
But other than that, they haven't said anything.
They haven't put out any kind of explanation or statement one way or another about the fact that one of their senior executives says that the company is systematically discriminating against white people.
Of course, from internal Disney footage previously released by Chris Ruffo, we know that Disney executives generally want to advance a culture of racial equity and so on.
So it's not exactly a stretch to assume that they're on board with this at the highest levels of the company.
This is a very big problem for Disney.
It only gets worse.
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When did capitalism become such a hot-button issue anyway?
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I wanted to mention this from Daily Wire.
Disney is hiring a diversity, equity, and inclusion director who could earn up to four times the national average income pushing a far-left agenda.
A job posting from the Walt Disney Company for a DEI director role advertises a minimum salary of $197,000 a year, a maximum salary of a little over $241,000.
The average American salary in 2024 is $59,428 annually.
The job description reads, We're seeking a director of strategic external engagement, Enterprise DEI, to lead our efforts in building strategic relationships with external stakeholders, driving community engagement, and generating valuable insights to support our diversity, equity, and inclusion objectives.
The new director will be tasked with advancing the company's left-wing program and be required to lead initiatives focused on specific dimensions of diversity and amplify DEI content and communicate progress.
So this is still happening at Disney.
And that's one takeaway here is that any hope that Disney will unwoke itself and get away from wokeness, any hope, I think is greatly misplaced.
Because Disney is, this is what Disney is to its core at this point.
It's what much of corporate America is.
And in some cases, some of these companies might get a little embarrassed about some of the DEI stuff because it's, I think, now roundly recognized by most Americans as a waste of time at best.
Although it's much worse than a waste of time.
So they might get a little embarrassed about it.
They don't put it front and center.
I think you're going to find some of these companies start rebranding.
I'm actually surprised that they still use the letters DEI at all, that they haven't already rebranded it.
Still keep it in place, but just call it something else.
Even move the letters around.
Maybe call it IDE, inclusion, diversity, and equity.
So I'm surprised they haven't done that yet.
They will do it eventually.
But we are far from the point where Disney will be anything but a radically left company because, again, this is down to the core of who they are, their corporate identity.
Now, since they are hiring a DEI leader in the company, I do have to say, and I'm just throwing this out there, that I am, I don't know if you heard this, but I am officially DEI certified.
And I would happily take on this role.
This is something that I would do.
I would tackle this important task.
And I'm well equipped.
I have the skills necessary to, what was it?
Amplify DEI content and communicate progress.
I don't know what that means.
I suspect it means nothing, but I'm ready to do it.
Whatever it is, I'm ready to do it.
I can amplify content all day long.
Amplifying content is easy.
Give me the content.
I'll amplify it.
And as far as communicating progress goes, well, you know, that's easy to do.
I don't know how, I guess communicating progress is just letting people know, hey, we are progressing, folks.
There, I just did it.
I communicated progress.
And the great thing is that literally anyone can do these jobs because this is not a real thing.
Like we talked about yesterday, Robin D'Angelo caught up in a plagiarism scandal.
And there's so much plagiarism that goes on with these people because it's not a real subject.
It's not a real thing.
There's only one central idea.
There's only one idea that they have, which is that white people are bad and racist.
And that's really it.
That's all there is there.
And being a DEI expert, all that means is that you have accepted that doctrine.
And if you accept it, or at least pretend to accept it, then you too can be a DEI expert and maybe get a mid to six-figure job at a place like Disney.
The latest Uber woke episode from Disney's Uber Woke children show, which is called The Proud Family.
Now, for a little bit of background, The Proud Family was originally a kid show on the Disney channel back in the early 2000s.
It was canceled in 2005.
And then in 2022, it became just the latest reboot that nobody needed, nobody asked for, nobody wanted.
The rebooted Proud Family, which can be found now on Disney Plus, promises to be louder and prouder.
And it certainly fulfills at least half of that promise.
A clip from a recent episode has gone viral over the past few days.
And in it, we are treated to what we're told is a rap or a song about the sinister origins of the United States.
And here it is.
This country was built on slavery, which means slaves built this country.
Tilled this land from sea to sea to sea.
First there was rice, tobacco, sugarcane.
Then Wendy did his thing and cotton became king.
And we were its soldiers, four millions strong, fighting for America's freedoms, even though we remained America's slaves built this country.
The descendants of slaves continue to build this country.
Slaves built this country.
And we, the descendants of slaves in America, have earned reparations for their suffering.
And continue to earn reparations every moment we spent submerged in the systemic prejudice, racism, and white supremacy that America was standard with and still has not atoned for.
Slaves built this country.
Not only field hands, but carpenters, masons.
Blacksmiths, musicians.
Inventors built cities from Jamestown to New Orleans, Savannah County, Washington.
40 acres and a mill?
We'll take the 40 acres.
Keep the mill.
We make your family break.
From the southern plantation heirs.
To the northern banker.
To the New England ship owner.
The founding fathers.
Former president.
Current senators.
The Illuminati.
The New World Order.
Slaves built this country.
We had Tubman.
Turner.
Frederick D. Didn't they say Lincoln freed the slaves?
When slaves were men.
And women.
And only we can free ourselves.
Emancipation is not freedom.
Jim Crow, segregation, redlining.
Public schools fleeting private prisons where we become slaves again.
As we celebrate Juneteenth for the 18th time, our account is still outstanding.
Because this country was built on slavery, which means slaves built this country.
And we demand our 40 acres and a mule.
You can kick the mule.
Keep the 40.
taking our freedom.
Yeah!
Just some nice, wholesome children's content.
That's why I'll stick with the bluey, I think.
Okay, first of all, there's been some misinformation about the content of that clip.
People are saying that the Disney show featured an anti-American song.
Well, that is anti-American, but it's not a song.
It's literally just shrill voices chanting vacuous bumper sticker slogans without rhyme or rhythm, which I guess doesn't really separate it much from many other pop songs.
But as Martin Luther King would say, we should judge woke propaganda by not by its shrillness, but by its content.
The content here is ridiculous on multiple levels.
So let's go through them.
First, most importantly, and it is really necessary that we emphasize this, slaves did not build this country.
This country was built over the course of hundreds of years, beginning long before it was a country.
The building started in the 1400s when the first European explorers sailed across treacherous and uncharted seas to discover these lands.
It continued with the European settlers in the 1500s and 1600s who built a life for themselves in this unknown wilderness facing untold threats and for many of them certain death.
This country was built by the colonists and the American revolutionaries.
It was built by the pioneers who expanded the country from the east, heading west out into a hostile wilderness occupied by warring Indian tribes.
It was built by war and conquest, by discovery, by diplomacy, by industry.
It was built and then nearly undone by a civil war that killed 620,000 men, then built up again, only to thrive once more.
The country was built by the people who made it into the world's great power in the 20th century, who won world wars and brought about peace and economic prosperity.
It was built by many people over many centuries.
And for a portion of that history, some people in some parts of the country owned slaves.
That certainly is not enough to justify the claim that the slaves built the country.
To make that claim is to erase nearly everyone who really did build the country.
It's to paper over America's actual history with your grievance-mongering nonsense.
Now, if the mere historical fact of slavery automatically means that the country was built by slavery and forever is indebted to slaves and their descendants, then of course the same must be said about every nation on the planet.
There is no race, no people, no nation anywhere in the world who does not inherit the guilt of slavery, if indeed the guilt of slavery can be inherited.
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