DeSantis Fires Back at Disney’s Distortions

CLAY: I want to give some props here. If you have been paying attention at all to the way that the media has covered a bill in Florida which is designed to ensure that kindergarteners, first graders, second graders, and third graders effectively are not exposed to sex-related education, right? So you’re not going to hear about heterosexual sex, you’re not gonna hear about gay sex, you’re not gonna hear about transgenderism, you’re not gonna hear about any of that, which I think most parents think is appropriate for 5-year-old to 8-year-old kids, roughly.

I’ve got a first grader. I don’t think that he needs to be figuring out how the birds and the bees work in first grade school. I don’t think we need to have a deep analysis of heterosexuality versus homosexuality versus transgender. All these different things, to me, as a parent of a public-school kid, it seems appropriate that that is not topically accurate for young kids.

So this has turned into, the way that the mainstream media has covered it, the “don’t say gay” bill. And so you’ve got all different sorts of politicians running around screaming the word “gay,” which is supposedly prohibited from classrooms. Of course, that’s not true. It’s actually just designed to ensure that kids are learning age-appropriate lessons. So Disney, which is based in many ways in Florida…

Many of you listening, probably, have gone to Disney World. Certainly, a lot of you listening have watched Disney-related programs. Probably a lot of you are probably with Disney+ subscribers. All of this is true for me. Disney has a new CEO. His name is Bob Chapek, and so far he has been as politically active as Bob Iger, who is the former CEO of Disney and wanted to be president of the United States.

Bob Iger still might run for president of the United States at some point, and he (as a result) embraced in parts of left-wing ideology. For instance, with Jemele Hill, formally of ESPN, called the president of the United States, Donald Trump, “a white supremacist,” he didn’t do anything, didn’t care, probably agreed with her. And Bob Chapek has tried, the new CEO, to stay out of the political fray. But there were so many left-wing activists that were fired up about this bill that finally Disney issued a statement and ripped the state of Florida for passing this new bill.

And here’s the deal: Lots of people out there who are politicians would avoid this conflict and would pretend that it didn’t happen and would let Disney tee off on the people of Florida and would not fire back. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was not going to stand for that. So yesterday in an event in Boca Raton, he specifically said, “I’m not gonna let Disney take shots at us.” Listen to this small segment of a couple of minutes of comments that he made on this issue.

BUCK: That’s the way you gotta do it, Clay.

CLAY: It is.

BUCK: So he’s right. He’s right on the facts here. But as we know, if you’re a conservative and you become someone who’s out there – whether it’s fighting in public or even just having a debate with someone in your day-to-day life — being right on the facts isn’t enough. You actually have to be willing to take the fight, so to speak, to the other side a little bit say, “No, I’m sorry.

“We’re not gonna live in this fantasy world that you’re trying to create. You can’t say a bill bans a word or bans conversation that it flatly does not. You can’t do that, and I’m not gonna let you do that.” Ron DeSantis terrifies libs. Whatever one thinks about his future aspirations or not, it doesn’t matter, because he’s showing a state that is run well and that is attracting people from all over the country by the hundreds of thousands. We have the equivalent now of people, of Americans moving to Florida… A lot of people I know are moving to Texas, a lot of people are moving to — I was gonna say Nashville, but — Tennessee.

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: Nashville too. But this is the federalism that we have at work, and Ron DeSantis is always putting on a clinic not only for how to run a state well so that people want to come there, right? It’s not easy leave where you live. I live in New York City. It’s the most straightforward thing. You might have family, your job, your roots, your town. People are saying, “I’m done. I’m leaving California. I’m leaving New Jersey.

“I’m moving down to Florida, Texas, and these other states.” But beyond that, DeSantis also shows that you have to be firm. You have to you have to be strong when you hold the line against — let’s just call it — “the fake news.” You have to be willing to do that because look what they were able to do in the last week, Clay. The entire media apparatus was somehow running around saying the “don’t say gay” bill. This would be like they walk around saying, the “Biden Saves America” bill instead of the big spending bill, the Build Back Better agenda. They’re not supposed to engage in that kind of obvious propaganda. And Ron DeSantis throwing a haymaker here.

CLAY: Well, plus it’s Disney, and I hate this. I really, genuinely hate the idea ’cause I’m talking about taking my kids to Disney World because you like Disney World, ’cause kids like Disney World, right? Kids, by and large, enjoy going to amusement parks. I don’t enjoy the idea that I have to contemplate whether I want to spend money on something that I know my kids would like because Disney is deciding to embrace this woke apparatus of political agenda.

So what I wish were happening, what I wish were happening is that we were in a situation where Disney would just say — what I wrote my most recent book on, Buck, Republicans Buy Sneakers Too — we’re in the business of appealing to kids everywhere, and so we’re not going to get drawn in to every single fake political story. But when they do, and they did, I absolutely love that Ron DeSantis came back with a haymaker. ‘Cause, what? Disney’s not leaving Florida. (laughs) They’re not gonna relocate.

BUCK: I canceled my Disney+ subscription, Clay, because of the Gina Carano thing.

CLAY: The Mandalorian mess.

BUCK: I love The Mandalorian. The first season was great. The second season kind of went off the road. But the point is, I had a Disney+ subscription. My family had a Disney+ subscription, put it that way, and we canceled it when the Gina Carano thing happened because it was just so outrageous.

CLAY: And you hated having to do that, right, that you had to make a choice on politics when you might otherwise like some content, right? It’s stupid. The same thing is happening in sports where I feel like every day, I’m throwing punches in this culture war and we’re in and I just wish they would say, “Hey, you know what? You like basketball; you can watch basketball. You like football; you can watch football.” It’s not the world we live in right now.

BUCK: I mean, for me, you know, we make a lot of jokes about how I’m not a big professional sports fan. I kind of used to be. I’ve gotten much less so as I’ve gotten older. And for me football is a good enough product that I go, “Well, I kind of like to watch it sometimes.” NBA? I grew up, and I had an uncle with season tickets to the nix so I used to go on a regular basis to Madison Square Garden, I know those Knicks players still by name.

CLAY: The Patrick Ewing days, you were there.

BUCK: Patrick Ewing, Trent Tucker, John Starks. I can go down the whole list. The Bomb Squad, Anthony Mason. Not Dominique Wilkins, Gerald Wilkins. I remember, I used to see these guys all the time. I went to tons of games. Now it just the NBA, I watch, I’m like, “I’m sorry. I’m just done. I’m just not gonna do this anymore,” and I wish that wasn’t the case. And I wish more people, quite honestly, would see this as damaging to their business interests, but Colin Kaepernick? I was asking you about it before the show today. Suddenly, he’s in the best shape of his life, a better QB now than (crosstalk).

CLAY: It’s been like five years in a row that Colin Kaepernick’s been in the best shape of his life and he wants to play in the NFL. But, Buck, it was just like five months ago that he had a Netflix documentary special where I think we pulled some cuts I believe we played on the show.

BUCK: “I Am Colin”? Is that what it was called, I think? Is that right?

CLAY: I didn’t watch any of it except for the clips that I saw. But he compared the NFL draft to a slave auction. That was that a huge part.

BUCK: I do remember that.

CLAY: I think we played that on the show, and it shows — like, literally the video shows guys — and look, if you’re not paying attention the NFL Combine, it just happened. Everybody walks around basically in underwear. Your height, your weight, your arm length. Like, basically every single thing about you, they analyze in an effort to determine whether or not to pay you millions of dollars to play football.

And so Colin Kaepernick in his documentary that Netflix theoretically paid millions of dollars to him for, they take those guys walking around shirtless, getting measured, and turn it into a slave auction. So they move from, “You’re an NFL head coach looking at the different possible guys that you’re gonna pay millions of dollars to,” to, “You’re at a slave action and you’re bidding on slaves standing on a stage.”

BUCK: Comparing to people who are dehumanized and treated as property and threatened with the constant possibility of extreme physical abuse and death to multimillionaire celebrities who everybody wants to be like and be near and have them —

CLAY: They are making the voluntary choice to play football, right?

BUCK: Completely insane. It is about as… You’re picking being among the most privileged and blessed people in the freest, best country in the world right now and comparing it to a situation of human beings being treated as property, as subhuman. Completely insane.

CLAY: And what’s wild about it in addition to the insanity is, Buck, he’s now trying to become a slave again, right? So he has gone from saying, “The NFL treats everybody like slaves; you are effectively a slave,” to begging and training for the opportunity to be a slave again. So what is it? I can’t even keep up with him. Are athletes still slaves, or is it an aspirational goal to be a NFL player? Like, the answer is it’s the second, but he’s not even intelligent enough to have been able to put forward a consistent position on this.

BUCK: Just circling back to the corporate wokeness thing for a second, NFL obviously this counts as well there. But when you’re talking about Disney, here’s a problem we have to face. The woke left is mobilized and activated and makes demands and puts pressure on these places all the time. I think conservatives just by nature of how we view the world…

And, you know, we have a more individual and liberty and live and let live attitude to things are less likely to do this stuff, but if we allow this to continue, they continue to dominate corporate America is what ends up happening. They get their way. And so this is why I say, you know, we either do something about it or we just keep complaining about it.

CLAY: Well, I think what you have to do at a minimum is show that there’s consequences for taking statements and making statements like these. And a lot of Republicans just pretend it doesn’t exist, politicians. I like the fact that Ron DeSantis fired back because you need to know that this is not a situation where you can just bow down and genuflect at the altar of the woke and there’s not gonna be consequences on the other side when you do that, and I appreciate DeSantis throwing punches.

BUCK: This is like when Amazon Web Services kicked Parler, the free speech social media platform, off, effectively de-interneted it. I knew so many people who said, “Yeah, it’s horrible!” I was like, “I love getting these Amazon packages.” It’s like, “Okay.” They know that, and that is why they can do that because they know that you’re not going to stop.