Disney’s first approach to Trump 2.0: Give Donald Trump what he wants.
Now it’s trying something different: The opposite.
In a filing with the federal government this week, Disney pushed back against its attempt to regulate which guests can appear on “The View,” calling those efforts “unprecedented” and a threat to free speech.
And while Disney’s fight in this case is theoretically with the Federal Communications Commission, not the president of the United States, we should be clear about this: FCC head Brendan Carr was placed in the job by Donald Trump, and acts as if he is an extension of Donald Trump.
So when Disney says Carr’s agency is out of line, it knows exactly how that critique is going to land in the White House.
It’s also the second time in weeks that Disney has taken on the White House. Last month, Melania Trump and then Donald Trump called on Disney’s ABC to punish Jimmy Kimmel for a joke he’d made about them. The following day, Carr’s FCC said it was reviewing Disney’s broadcast licenses, years earlier than planned. But Kimmel has stayed on the air, where he continues to tweak the Trumps.
To be clear: This isn’t a case of Disney, or new CEO Josh D’Amaro, challenging Trump to a duel. But it does seem to be a calculated call by D’Amaro: He’s decided to push back, politely but firmly, against Trump’s demands.
And that’s a meaningful change from the message Disney sent in the first part of Trump’s second term.
In the fall of 2024 — after Trump’s reelection but before he’d been inaugurated — Disney settled a defamation suit many experts thought it would easily win, agreeing to a $15 million payout to Trump (via his planned presidential library). And in the fall of 2025, Disney took Kimmel off the air after Carr complained about another Trump joke the host had told.
But extensive public outcry over Kimmel’s suspension helped then-CEO Bob Iger change his mind, and he reinstated Kimmel after a few days. Now his successor seems to be following in his footsteps — neither man is critiquing Trump in public, but they’re also not giving him what he wants.
As I’ve noted before, keeping Kimmel on the air doesn’t mean that Disney is immune to pressure from Trump and Carr. And if you wanted to, you could argue that keeping Kimmel on air, but not pushing back out loud against Trump, isn’t really pushing back.
But this week’s filing makes it harder to make that argument. It’s narrowly about the FCC’s “equal time” clause, and the FCC’s attempt to use that clause to regulate whether a daytime talk show can have certain political candidates on air (the issue also flared up a few months ago over on Paramount’s CBS and its late-night show hosted by Stephen Colbert).
But the language of the filing, which uses phrases like “chill critical protected speech,” and “the danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,” makes it clear that Disney isn’t just making a narrow technocratic argument with Trump’s FCC, but a big, thematic one.
The fact that Disney is using Paul Clement, a well-known conservative attorney who worked in the George W Bush White House and has argued dozens of cases in the Supreme Court, is another message: We’re willing to fight this for a long time, with heavy-duty firepower.
I asked Disney for comment and was directed back to its FCC filing. I haven’t heard back from Carr.
Again, none of this means that Disney is joining the #Resistance. It would rather not be fighting the federal government. And it definitely doesn’t want to alienate the tens of millions of people who voted for Trump, all of whom it wants to watch its shows and movies, and to visit its theme parks and cruise ships.
But it does look like Disney is willing to draw some discrete lines in the sand. That’s a change worth noting.
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