The Trish Regan Show - RESURFACED FOOTAGE: Disney CEO CAUGHT on Tape Admitting FCC Violations! CAUGHT ON CAMERA!

Episode Date: June 14, 2025

A resurfaced video of Disney’s CEO could prompt a formal crackdown from the FCC over an admission of shocking regulatory violations. This is a CLIP from the LIVE Trish Regan Show Episode 124 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Disney. That's why they fired that Terry Moran. They just said they just didn't need the guy anymore because he was too much headache. They're trying to get a Hulu deal done. They just bought the rest of Hulu. They're all excited about that. They're trying to make this move into streaming. Good luck. Really? We wish you well. I mean, the more streamers, the better, right? And you do need to get away and diversify away from your mainstream media content, including ABC. But this guy, Terry Moran, he's going on to bigger and better things. He says after. this ordeal. Hey, they're giving you the big break of a lifetime. You know, you're doing the interview. I picked you because frankly, I never heard of you, but that's okay. I picked you, Terry, but you're not being very nice. He had MS-13 tattooed. We'll agree to disagree. I want to move on to something else. Terry. Terry, why'd you have to do what you did, Terry? Terry. Hello, everyone. I'm Terry Moran. And for almost 28 years, I was a reporter and anchor for ABC News. And as you may have heard, I'm not there anymore. I'm here with you on Substack, this amazing space,

and I can't wait to get at it, to get at the important work that we all have to do in this time of such trouble for our country. I'm going to be reporting and interviewing and just sharing with you and hoping to hear from you as well. So it'll be a few days, maybe a little bit longer. Got to get some stuff sorted out, but can't wait to see you. Thanks.

You know what? Here's the good news. He can do that. Just like I can do this. Okay, so more power to him. I think it's better because he clearly had a point of view. Like, he hated Stephen Milver. He hates Trump. He hates MAGA. He hates the whole thing. So you know what? Don't sit there and pretend you're fine with it all. Don't pretend you are an unbiased journalist. I'm so sick of this journalism with the capital J. You know what? You guys all have your opinion. How can you not have an opinion? You should have an opinion. If you're so dumb to not have an opinion, then you don't belong reporting on any of this in the first place. But you know what? If you have an opinion, you still owe it to the country to show both sides. You know, some people say,

Tresh, God, do we have to watch again, the view or MSNBC or CNN? Do you really have to show us these clips? And I come back and I say, you know what, we have to see them, because we have to dissect them together because we have to understand what the other side is coming from. You know what? It makes your argument more powerful when you understand what they're about. But this guy, he was certainly about something. We saw it in that interview. Did we not with Donald Trump? We saw it all come out. It all hung out until he decided to go on Twitter and it really, really hung out.

But it was all sort of there. It's just that he was pretending I am a journalist with a capital J. Watch. Do you think the reputation of the United States has gone down under your presence? No, I think it's gone way up, and I think we're a respected country again. We were left at all over the world. We had a president that couldn't walk up a flight of stairs, couldn't walk down a flight of stairs, couldn't walk across the stage without falling.

We had a president that was grossly incompetent. You knew it, I knew it, and everybody knew it, but you guys didn't want to write it because you're fake news. All right. Thank you. And, by the way, ABC is one of the worst. That's okay. Thank you. And he's bad at his job, okay? Bad at his job, because when someone comes to you and says,

because you're fake news, and he goes, all right. I mean, it's like he's a deer in headlights, right? Like, what do you? The answer is, well, Mr. President, you know, I mean, you can come back at him, right? It's a free country. Instead, he's like, all right. And so then Trump, sensing the opportunity as only he would, just moves him for the kill and the whole thing unwound.

And so maybe he was jilted, maybe he was upset. Maybe that's what caused him to write these terrible things on Twitter about poor Stephen Miller who didn't deserve any of it. You know what? It is so not fair for Stephen Miller. It's not fair. I know him, I know his wife, by the way, as well, who's just a sweetheart, like an absolute sweetheart.

Like, if Stephen comes across is kind of tough, she's the opposite of that. She is just like all sunshine and smiles. And Stephen, you know, like it's a lot of. hard for him to smile and he doesn't have any hair anymore and you know he's very dedicated to what he's doing and he doesn't he doesn't you know walk the walk and talk the talk in terms of you know playing around he's he doesn't want to be charming he wants to get the job done and he gets frustrated with dumb people sometimes i think anyway so this guy goes on about him this is terry you know moran saying all kinds of terrible, terrible things about Stephen Miller, and it's really just kind of too bad.

So he just shot down his whole career of 28 years. I kind of wonder if he wanted to do it. Did he want to? Was that the plan all along? Maybe he knew that ABC was not going to renew his gig because ABC is really stretched financially. I mean, wow. Of course, they're getting rid of the white guy again, right? Yeah, in the middle of the DEI investigation. But they had to do in this case, right, under these circumstances. I just kind of wonder why everybody else, like Georgie Poo, Why is Georgie Poo's still there? Georgie, you know, the one on the weekend that cost his network $16 million. You could have gotten rid of him, thank you very much.

But nope, they got rid of Terry. Anyway, J.D. Vans writing, an ABC journalist posted this absolutely vile smear on Stephen Miller. It's stripping with hate. Remember the time you watch this? You don't remember that when you watch ABC's coverage of the Trump administration. Because it's like, tell us what you really think. Okay, now the curtain's been put. peel back. Now we know who these journalists are, and that's kind of a problem because nobody

trusts them at all, at all. Nobody trust them. And so they told Fox News, well, we had to get rid of them because, you know, we are a journalist organization and we can't have people saying things like that on X. And the White House has come out and said, this is disgusting. You know, they're cementing themselves as fake news. We've seen everything on the view. We know that Iger's trying to work with them on the views saying, hey, hey, hey, you know, caught me some slack. Can you guys maybe cover some entertainment stories or anything other than what you keep covering? And their answer is no. Their answer is no. And I got to say, they're increasingly putting themselves in jeopardy of actually being out of a show altogether,

because as Disney tries to morph into something different, maybe they take the view and they put it on Hulu. Because who needs it on network television? I mean, frankly, who needs network television? We all know that. Did you cut the cord yet? I did. Okay, this is giving you a little too much insight

into how many cable boxes I have. I saved like six or 700 bucks a month, okay, after I cut the cord on my mind. I'm like, this is amazing. Why didn't we do this years ago? Well, you know, things are changing. And nobody watches cable television anymore. My parents are visiting right now, and they're all confused, right, because there is no cable television. And they're very confused because of the commercials that they get during the YouTube stream. And it's like, you know, elephants or something in this like nice white noise. And they're like, but where are the commercials? And I'm like, yeah,

this is, you know, welcome to. And that's a special streaming product. But it's a whole new ballgame. And so Iger, who sometimes I question really whether or not he should be the CEO of this company, is trying to figure out how he fits in in this brave new world and what it means for all of his properties. What's interesting for me is that people's faith in the country is waning. That's the thing that's pissing me off because, in fact, there's a reason Joe Biden ran the way he did. There's a reason he's running for democracy now because that's really what's at stake. You worried that you can't pay your bill? Wait, the other guy becomes president, and you won't have to worry about it because you'll be in some camp somewhere.

Because that's his promise. His promise to us is he's going to force people to do his bidding. That's what he said. I'm going to be good on day one, and I'm going to turn into this other person. So here's the deal. This is all up to you. this is all up to you. We can sit up here till we're green in the face.

But this really comes down to the people. So whatever you do, don't vote for Donald Trump. And the American public said, yeah, you know what? I'm going to vote for Donald Trump. And so now he's the president. And so now they're trying to fit this narrative, right, that they had advanced before things. I know the fact that he's trying to actually have some law in order

and make sure that things don't spiral out of control in the state of California. Oh, now he's the bad guy. He's the bad guy for doing that. Come on. So they'll go with this, even though their boss is telling them not to, and their boss is telling them not to, because again, they've got a mess on their hands at ABC News. And the mess is about to get so much worse because of some sounds that I just found. But before I show you that, you need to understand the backdrop.

Some of you, if you're a regular viewer of this show, you already know this. Brandon Carr is like on the warpath when it comes to ABC. He already sent Bob Eager a letter before he even came into the office. So like before, it was like right after the election. He sends Bob Eager a nasty letter saying, you know, nobody trusts you guys. And now he's sent another letter. He's got a full-on investigation going because they're looking at actually revoking all of the affiliations that they have with their 200 and some on channels around the country. It's a misnomer to actually think that all those ABC affiliates in your hometown or actually ABC, they're not.

Why do you think people say they trust their local news the most? they do. It's the network feed that you're getting from ABC News. ABC, the network only owns about seven O&Os. That's what they call them, owned and operated stations. They own one in New York. They own one in San Francisco. And this is, so there's only seven of them. Everything else is independently owned. And they, it's like being a franchise owner, right? It's like owning a McDonald's and you have to pay all this money to ABC to get their programming. And then you have to run it. You don't have the option.

That was always a big deal. So they put these contracts into place. So everybody has to take the view. Not everybody has to take Tamron Hall, who's on after. But everybody has to take the view. And everybody has to take World News Tonight with David Muir. And everybody has to take the primetime programming. And you're like, at some point, like, why am I paying for this garbage?

when I know I could put a talk show on for a fraction of the cost myself on my ABC affiliate, and it would be a whole lot better. And so Brennan Carr's like, it's not fair to the affiliates. We're going to revoke this. We're the FCC. There's a certain amount of standard that you have to follow. And whether it's, you know, spin in fake news all the time, or whether it is being in direct violation of the Constitution

because of your DEI insanity, we're going to get you. Here he is on Fox. Your probe into Disney's DEI policies, their senior counsel writes, This is all about bullying and intimidation. Mr. Carr's most powerful tool is his vote on the commission to approve mergers and acquisitions. Is this about Disney's hiring practices, or is it about something else?

Yeah, this is about the hiring practices and their employment practices. Look, broadcasters and Disney owns one, ABC, they have an obligation under federal law. We have EEO rules at the FCC, which means you can't make hiring decisions based on protected characteristics, including gender and race.

And the evidence we have so, far indicates potentially that Disney and ABC were making employment decisions based on race and gender, including having effectively race-defined affinity groups within the company, we have evidence that they put quotas in place based on specific demographics. If the evidence does, in fact, play out and shows that they were engaged in race and gender-based discrimination, that's a very serious issue at the FCC that could fundamentally go to their character qualifications to even hold a license, but we're going to follow the facts wherever they go. Look, President Trump's been clear. We are turning the page on DEI. The first week I was chairman of the FCC. I said we are

ending our own promotion of DEI at the FCC. People will be shocked if they learned the millions of dollars that the FCC alone was spending to promote DEI. We had it listed as our second highest strategic priority. I mean, think about everything the FCC can and should be doing, national security issues, bridging the digital divide, space economy. And we had promoting DEI is our number two strategic priority. Now we're going to focus on our core mission. Yeah, our core mission. Did you hear that? Bob Iger. Okay, so Bob Iger's kind of facing some tough times because Brandon is suing him. Well, you know, one of the things that Brandon is looking at, I want to point this out before I go to what Bob Iger was saying, is whether or not they had any

special affinity spaces and whether they had a like discriminatory practices going on and it doesn't matter that they ended them when Donald Trump became the president if they were going on beforehand then the FCC's going all in all right so here is the challenge this is a soundbite posted on x Bob Beiger's nemesis. Yeah, he really hates Elon. Remember when he tried to pull all the money away from X? And Elon's like, go F yourself, Bob. Great, great moment on television. The poor reporter, Andrew Ross Sorkin from the New York Times and Z NBC was like, and then Elon doubled down. He's like, yeah, you heard me. Go F, you know, if you think you're going to intimidate with me with money, good luck. Anyway, here's Bob Iger. This is from a couple years ago talking about the importance of all this diversity. So I think that this could come back to haunt him.

I mean, Bob has talked about this eloquently since he's become CEO. I'll say a couple of things about it. You know, we've tended to shy away from politics. And in doing so, I think we've shied away from talking about issues that aren't political at all, like the issues that we're talking about today because we believe in doing so maybe it looks like it looks like we're taking a stand well in that reality we should be taking a stand i take by the way i take responsibility for this i was CEO for 15 years and so i you know i i managed the the company i'm just going to add for some context here and i know it's a little bit hard to hear because he's on some kind of zoom call he was the CEO for a while he stepped down and let bob chape it come in and it was just complete bedlam because you see the

stuff had already started. Bob had already put it in place, the first Bob. And so then they put Cheapik in, and Bob was apparently like, you know, hanging out in the hallways, like inviting people to his office for meetings and still sort of kind of running things behind the scenes and allegedly per multiple reports undermining poor Bob Cheapik who just didn't know what hit him. And so like it was game over before it started. But this is, I guess, when he was not CEO and so some of this DEI stuff was going on. Let's listen. These public-facing processes and how we were portraying ourselves. And I think that we have to be less cautious, as Bob I think was just alluding to,

about such things, and not be concerned. Like, just commenting about what happened in Washington last week, that's not political on our part at all. We know that what we saw was fundamentally wrong and that it was rooted in hatred and disrescent. and contempt and intolerance. And we should feel free as a company to comment about that without retribution. Another thing I want to say that I've learned these last nine to 12 months is, you know, I'm very proud of a lot of the work we've done in terms of diversity and inclusion on screen.

When we did Coco, for instance, at Pixar, a great example of that, or Tiana, or of course, Black Panther is one of the great examples of that. examples of that. I allow those things to make me feel a bit complacent in a sense. It's not that I wanted to be that way, but I thought, wow, we did Black Panther. How great are we? And it caused me to not focus as much as I should have on the culture of the company and the environment. And in the voices that were telling those stories as opposed to just how they were being portrayed on the screen. So, again, what do you think?

Brandon might want to take a look at that one because if he's concerned about previous DEI programs, if he's concerned that they were actually just putting programming into place just to placate something because they had a political agenda they wanted to serve, then, yeah, that could come back to haunt them. And we know that they were doing this, in part because of what has come out in Gina Carano's lawsuit and in part because did I show you what I saw this is a couple years ago I'm like you got to be kidding me I some of you guys have seen this my son wanted to go as um dash you know for Halloween so I went online to Disney and I looked for a boy's costume do you see what's on the screen

right there princess costumes those are the four first four that came up I was searching for boys costumes see I took a picture of it I made lots of circles boys costumes I underlined boys costumes. And so why am I getting one, two, three, four, five girls' costumes, and then I get a boys? Are you kidding me? Like, they had an agenda and it has not served them well financially at all. Now has it. I mean, you have only to look, only to look at what was going on there with Snow White, the disaster that Snow White became. It causes me to question whether or not Baba is the guy for the job, right? Like, should he really be in this position? Here's a new article that just came out this week. He's all excited because he's completing the deal with Hulu. And he's

also making it clear, and he told CNBC this after telling them two years ago that he was going to exit all those legacy media businesses, that he wants to keep those businesses. He wants to keep the businesses because he still thinks there's an opportunity in there. You know, I got news for him. There's not. There we get. Here's the quote. Let's go. I'm going to make it all big so we can look at it together here, guys. All right, Bob Iger saying, having a broadcast network like ABC is part of that. In other words, having this big distribution. I think that there's a lot more value in a broadcast network. Again, if it's paired very, very seamlessly with a streaming business. Okay, so he wants to use the content creation and then get it onto the streaming side. But the problem is the way the cable agreement is, work, that's kind of hard to do. The way the FCC agreements work, that's kind of hard to do. And it's not as lucrative. ESPN, he said, is an obvious example of that. Okay, yeah, ESPN, but ESPN is a completely different story. You know why? ESPN has something that people want.

News, I hate to say it. You know what? It is what it is. I've been in this business my whole life. It is a commodity, and everybody has the news. And so why do you go and watch the news one place versus another? Probably because you like or trust the anchor, the host. probably because like in this day and age, you actually want some transparency. So therefore, you know, the David Mirren, you know, he's a very nice guy. We were once friends, you know, until Trump. It's funny. I get to lose a lot of friends after Trump.

But David is a good example of sort of a very tightly wound. Here's my script. Let me read my lines. Let me make sure my hair is absolutely perfect. And that, you know, we have all the graphics and we have all the whizbane. but that is banged, but that kind of product, I think, is no longer relevant in today's society because there's just too much competition incoming, you know, from the likes of me and other podcasters. So, you know, they're thinking that maybe this will work on Hulu. No, it's not,

you're going to have to completely change. You're going to have to get all new talent. You're going to actually have to be like normal, all right? There's no prompters. There's no prompters with what I do. I mean, I kind of have an outline, right? You guys know where I'm going. I think I put it in the show no, it's the things that we're going to be talking about today. But there is, you know, no tightly wound, even clock. Have you ever noticed? Yeah, you know, because I say I'm going to be here at 1 and then I'm here at like 107 or sometimes even worse, right? But, yeah, hey, it's live, baby, it's live. What I would say, though, is there's no clock in that, okay, I have an A block that lasts nine minutes and 10 seconds, and I have a B block that's three minutes and two, seconds and like that's how it works even in cable because you have to meet all these hard breaks for commercials here i just go so it's just completely different and exciting and i see so many of you guys saying oh trisha's so great over here it is you know what because you you never really got to see the full on me and the other in the other um mechanisms only because i well i had to send my scripts

to get edited i had to every day like and it would drive me crazy because sometimes they'd come through with ridiculous edits two minutes before air and I'm like what am I supposed to do like I'm going to fix it now right and then it ties you in knots because like what are you supposed to say like if you want to go off prompter and then they're like no no don't go off prompter you know what it's better over here always being off prompter shall we say anyway I would just say I am losing faith in one Bob Eiger I really am I'm losing faith in him because I thought he'd at least be better than Chepic, but I don't think he is, and I don't think he can get the job done. And I think that shareholders have kind of had it. And I think at some point they're going to have to spin off

these media businesses, and I know he's not going to get the money he wants for ABC. It just is what it is. It's a fallen network, okay? Bob, get over it, cut your losses. Keep ESPN, because I do think the sports thing will work for you, and you can charge enough of a subscription. Disney Plus, maybe, I mean, but you've got to get back to what Disney is. Good, wholesome entertainment. not all this crazy stuff that you keep trying to force feed us. I mean, nobody wants to take their kids to see that. So you got a long ways to go. The cruise business, though, Rob and I have talked about this around 76 research. The cruise business is pretty good, although that's going downhill too. I think they're cutting some costs, if you would, even in the cruise business. This company,

I don't love. I just don't love it. And I think that they're going to have a lot of challenges, and they should have taken Nelson Pelt's advice way back. He was, you know, trying to help them spiff up the place and earn more money. But they didn't want to take the advice. Bob thought it hard. He lived to see another day. But how many I do not know. I really do not know.