Will ABC Strain the Relationship Between Disney and President Trump?

March 16th, 2017 9:52 PM

Editor's Note: The following post originally appeared on Carolina Culture Warrior. It has been edited for publication on NewsBusters with the author's permission.

As previously stated, Walt Disney Company CEO Bob Iger has been wanting to help Donald Trump as much as possible, despite its ABC arm attacking Trump and his supporters. ABC chief Ben Sherwood is doing all he can to destroy Trump and his administration at all costs. That would be a major internal conflict at one of the largest media and entertainment conglomerates in the country. 

To add fuel to the fire, in 2015, former Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos got into trouble for donating money to the Clinton Foundation while anchoring both Good Morning America and This Week. In addition, ESPN and ABC’s prime-time lineup continue to use their venues to respectively spew out liberal social engineering and vicious attacks every day, like this one on black conservatives:

Lucy: You guys just said that you would’ve voted for anyone who was black, but what if instead of Obama, it was Clarence Thomas or Herman Cain or Ben Carson?

Daphne: Oh, God, no.

Dre: Definitely not that fool.

Curtis: Dude is a weirdo.

Lucy: Yeah, exactly. Well, in my mind, Hillary Clinton is the Ben Carson of white women.

Daphne: Oh — what?!

Dre: Is Ben Carson even black?

This month, Iger met with Disney stockholders in Denver, Colorado, and as expected, there was a near revolt. It’s no surprise, as both ABC and ESPN continue to cause major problems for Disney’s earnings. The Hollywood Reporter was at the Denver meeting and has more:

He addressed another activist shareholder who claimed ESPN and ABC News had a liberal bias. “I’m going to disagree with just about everything you said,” Iger said in response, before denying any bias at ESPN and defending ABC News for its coverage.

“I can stand here today, look you in the face, and say I’m proud of the efforts of ABC News. I respect ABC News. And I believe they work very hard to present news in an extremely fair way,” he said. Iger added that people will always see media bias, “yourself included and perhaps the president, who believe it [the news] is not being presented in a way that’s consistent with their own beliefs.”

The tone of that response was similar to the one made last year which I made in The American Spectator. As was the case then, he’s worth defending because of his interest in working with Trump despite being a registered Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton. 

That being said, just because you’re now focusing on such great businesses like Marvel, Pixar, and the Star Wars franchise, it doesn’t mean he should try and sugarcoat the sharp turn to the left that both ABC and ESPN have taken. Rather, he should be concerned. Most television executives would have stopped the corruption going on at both networks a long time ago, but Sherwood might be looking for a way to profit from the liberal bleed infecting both broadcasters.

Think about it. A major corporation, The Walt Disney Company, has a CEO that is willing to listen to the President (even though he disagrees with him), but owns a television arm that wants to destroy him through news coverage, sportscasting, and prime-time programming. This is a major problem when a large conglomerate owns a very powerful broadcast television network that’s a part of the mainstream media, and said network (as well as some of its cable operations) is using its power to destroy a sitting President. Once again, that would cause an internal conflict at one of the most iconic corporations in the country.

Let’s hope none of this pans out.