If Walt Disney looked down on his company right now, former President Donald Trump said he would not be happy.
Trump’s comments come amid the unfolding saga between The Walt Disney Company and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). At the center of the chaos is the Sunshine State’s Parental Rights in Education law, which prohibits public-school educators from teaching children in pre-K through third-grade classrooms about gender identity and sexual orientation.
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“I think what’s happened with Disney and what Disney’s doing, Walt Disney is looking down,” the former president told CBN News’ David Brody. “He’s not happy, OK? Walt Disney said, ‘Whatever happened to my beautiful Magic Kingdom?'”
Trump’s remarks about Disney arose out of a broader conversation about transgenderism and attempts to teach kids about sexuality at what many believe to be entirely inappropriate ages.
“That’s not the way it should be, that’s for sure,” he told Brody of the transgender movement. “It is a terrible thing, especially when you’re taking children that don’t even have this period to form. And you know, in many cases, I hear 60% of the cases, later in life, they say, ‘Why did they do this to me?’ 60%. No, I think it’s a terrible thing.”
The former president was presumably referring to the handful of studies that have shown somewhere between 60% and 90% of those who express gender dysphoria as children grow out of the phenomenon by adulthood.
Trump said he is “opposed” to teaching young children about sexuality in the classroom and claimed Christianity has a significant role to play in protecting kids from that kind of exposure.
“This is a different world. It’s a new world, and I think it’s actually going to be shut out. You know, how it’s going to get shut out? Common sense. It’s common sense,” he said. “But I think it’s going, and I think religion will help shut it out.”
Trump continued, “You know, nobody has done more for Christianity — nobody has done more for religion of all types — than me. And they’re really doing things now, too, and I’ve always said it. They are against organized religion. They’re against Christianity.”
The parental rights legislation Disney opposes — a law the media mischaracterized as the “Don’t Say Gay bill” — addresses the very issue Trump spoke out on.
As for the Disney-DeSantis debacle, the latest development centers on Florida lawmakers’ revocation of the entertainment brand’s special government district, which has existed for more than a half-century.
DeSantis signed legislation last month setting into motion the breaking up of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, home to Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The governor told Fox News he is “not comfortable having one company with their own government and special privileges when that company has pledged itself to attacking the parents in my state,” referring to The Walt Disney Company’s vociferous condemnation of the parental rights law.
You can read more about the history of Reedy Creek and what the future looks like here.
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