Disney CEO: “Retaliatory” DeSantis Is “Anti-Business”

April 3, 2023 Business, Republicans

Deadline reports:

Calling moves by Gov. Ron DeSantis “anti-business and anti-Florida,” Bob Iger showed today that he isn’t afraid of a street brawl with the likely GOP presidential hopeful. “We love the state of Florida,” the Disney CEO said today at the company’s annual shareholder meeting, his first since returning to the top job in November. “We respect and appreciate what the state has done for us,” he added, but it’s been “a two-way street.”

But during a Q&A with shareholders, Iger stepped right up to the political plate and took a big swing. “A company has a right to freedom of speech just like an individual does,” the CEO said of Disney’s criticism last year of Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law. DeSantis “retaliates against us — in effect to punish a company for exercising its constitutional right,” he said. “And that seems really wrong to me.”

The Orlando Sentinel reports:



The Walt Disney Co. plans to invest $17 billion in Walt Disney World over the next 10 years and create 13,000 new jobs, CEO Bob Iger said Monday, as he accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of being vindictive over Disney’s response to the so-called “don’t say gay” law last year.

Iger’s remarks came in response to an audience question during Disney’s annual shareholder meeting in California over what steps Disney will take to protect shareholders in an anticipated legal battle among DeSantis, Disney and the former Reedy Creek Improvement District.

“Our point on this is that any action that thwarts those efforts, simply to retaliate for a position the company took, sounds not just anti-business, but it sounds anti-Florida, and I’ll just leave it at that,” he said.

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