The Matt Walsh Show - Disney's Woke Agenda Is Worse Than You Think | Proof For Your Liberal Friend

Episode Date: July 12, 2025

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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Just tell the manager You'll sue. Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Bad advice. You're talking to me. Kayak, got that right. As far as Disney's concerned on a white male, that's not who they're looking at promote. They're not considering any white males for a shop.

Disney blatantly discriminated against white men in particular. Eight months ago, Disney CEO Bob Eiger publicly pledged to pursue the first option. He declared that Disney would refocus his effort. 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. And certainly 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 Headland, 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, I think by a considerable margin and are you excited about that? Are you bracing your stuff?

Nothing gay at Star Wars. Nothing. It's pretty gay. Let's be honest. Leslie, are you, how do you feel? Am I gay? No, I know you are gay, but I'm asking you 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 some... Because nerds are gay. Well, some nerds are very not gay and are very threatened by gay stuff. Well, that's true. But in my world, nerds are gay. 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 as Star Wars, and I frankly... You're offended? Into it. No. I think that Star Wars is so gay already. Okay. I mean, have you seen the fits?

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. But 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. So 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 Headland 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, you know, all this is. And she's not the only CEO, the only one doing this. The CEO of Lucas Film, 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 Headband 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 fans, you know, 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 mouth. 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 Stephen Spielberg and Leslie Headland 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 on 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 Barry, 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 write the ship by ramming it directly into another iceberg. That's not to pick on the Ackleite 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. Watch. 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 jediyes 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, Keats are 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 number as 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 track. And of course, anyone reads that. Isn't that what you've been doing the whole Is 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, 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 and the kids show Young Jedi Adventures or the non-binary Jedi.

and Tales of the Empire, or the gay kisses in lightyear and rise of Skywalker, or the communist lesbian witches and the acolyte, or the prominent trans character in Bamax, 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 Strange World, 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'Keeffe's unedited footage, but here's some of what O'Keefe aired, watch. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deepop, people are searching for exactly what you've got.

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mouth. She's kind of unspoken. There are times when it's spoken. How would they say it? No way we're hiding a white helmet is spoken. According to these videotapes, Disney blatantly discriminated against whites, white men in particular. I think I'm sort of like well prepared for it, I'm well positioned for it. Right. As far as Disney's concerned,

on the white male, that's not who they're looking and promotes them. You know, I've been at the company 11 years now, so I have friends in HR and I have friends on those provisions and they're like, look, nobody else is gonna tell you this, Mike, but they're not considering any white mouse for the shot. They're just not.

Like, that's not what 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 department a few years ago now, who was half black, but didn't appear half black. And there was a creative executive who was like, we're not, like, that's not what's like they wanted somebody in meetings who would appear a certain way, and he wasn't going to bring that to the meeting. It kind of feels like where at some point there's going to be a

last year. That's kind of how it feels. Now, when civil rights the law, were first passed, laws that mandated that businesses stopped 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. 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. Rather 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 Rufaut, 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. Have you ever come across somebody saying that capitalism is evil or something similar? Maybe in a video online on TV or just talking with someone? What was your reaction? if you did. When did capitalism become such a hot-button issue anyway? Well, it seems like people have such strong opinions about it and very little understanding of whole of capitalism as a whole. Luckily, if you're looking to expand your knowledge and horizons on a broad range of topics,

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and why capitalism depends on private property rights, the rule of law, and freedom. You also discover why capitalism actually encourages morality rather than undermining it, like today's varying political agendas would have you believe. Understanding economics and capitalism empowers individuals and societies to make informed decisions, evaluate policy impacts,

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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, D-E-I 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. you know, 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 am, 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 DiAngelo 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-six-figure job at a place like Disney.

The latest UberWoke episode from Disney's Uber Woke Children's 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. Till this land from sea to sea to sea first there was rice, tobacco, sugar cane. Then Whitney did his thing and cotton became canned. And we were its soldiers. Four million strong. Fighting for America's freedoms, even though we remained America.

Slaves built this country. The descendants of slaves continue to build this. Slaves built this country. And we, the descendants of slaves in America, have earned reparations for their suffer. And continue to earn reparations every moment we spent submerged in the systemic prejudice racism and white supremacy that America was founded with and still has not a tone for slaves built this country not only field hands but carpenters mazes blacksmiths musicians inventors build cities from jamesdale to norland sabbatica washington 40 acres and a mule we'll take the 40

acres keep the mill we made your family's rich from the southern plantation heirs to the northern bankers to the new england ship owners the founding fathers former presidents current senators the Illuminati, the New World Order, slaves built this country. We had Tubman, Turner, Frederick D. Then they say Lincoln free the slaves. But slaves were meant. And women. And only we can free ourselves.

Emancipation is not freedom. Jim Crowe segregation, redlining, public schools, feeding private prisons where we become slaves again. As we celebrate June 10th for the umpteenth 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 keep the mules. Keep the 40. We're taking our freedom. Just some nice, wholesome children's content. This while I'll stick with a 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 rhythm, which I guess, you know, SEP doesn't really separate it much from many other pop songs. But as Martin Luther King would say, we should judge woke propaganda 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 that.

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 and the 50s 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 own 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.

As I will never tire of pointing out, the only thing that makes America's relationship to slavery unique is how comparatively quickly we abolished it and the lengths we went to abolish it.