A version of this story appeared in CNN Business’ Nightcap newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free, here.
The ABC defamation settlement with Donald Trump, which has emboldened the president-elect in his crusade against outlets he dislikes and outraged journalists across the industry, was a decision that reportedly came down to one man: Bob Iger, the formidable CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
According to the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, ABC’s rank and file are furious over the settlement, which was recommended by the general counsel of the network’s parent company and signed off on by Iger. (It was not taken to board for a vote, per the Times’ Brooks Barnes.)
There’s a lot we don’t know about what went into Iger’s decision. The view from the cheap seats has been that while the case seemed extremely winnable, Disney (which didn’t respond to CNN’s request for comment) may have been trying to avoid depositions that would have aired some embarrassing internal comms.
But for Disney to so readily retreat from a free speech fight before Trump is even in the White House? It suggests that anyone hoping for some kind of Corporate America-led Resistance can go ahead and exhale. Few companies are as well positioned as Disney — with its Jedi-level brand power and a veritable army of the best white-shoe lawyers money can buy — to stomach such a fight.
CEOs from tech and media have been practically tripping over one another to make their pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago since Trump won reelection last month. Since Thanksgiving, Trump has met with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, Apple’s Tim Cook, Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, TikTok’s Shou Chew, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others. A few of those executives have also tossed in $1 million donations to Trump’s inaugural fund, just for good measure.
“In the first term, everybody was fighting me,” Trump said at a press conference this week. “In this term, everybody wants to be my friend.”
“Friend” might be overstating what they’re going for, but call it what you will. The reality is that no one wants to risk angering Trump, who’s historically managed to tank a company’s stock with a single tweet.
Iger, like any executive with a fiduciary duty to shareholders, isn’t taking any chances. He is less than two years out from the end of his contract, and he has a laundry list of problems to deal with that predate Trump’s win. (Like, figuring out the future of streaming, making Marvel and Lucasfilm great again, and installing a successor to take the reins of one of the biggest media companies on the planet. No pressure!)
Still, it’s silly to suggest that Iger and Disney are somehow immune from the Trump Effect. Sure, Iger isn’t jetting down to Palm Beach like his fellow CEOs to dine with the incoming president. And no, he’s not making any splashy donations to the inauguration fund.
There are other ways to buy an insurance policy in the Trump era. Like, perhaps, directing ABC to a settlement that commits $15 million to the president-elect’s future presidential museum.
Coincidentally, the ABC settlement came days before the Hollywood Reporter broke the news that Disney had edited out a transgender storyline from its new Pixar series “Win or Lose.” When CNN’s Liam Reilly asked Disney whether that decision could be interpreted as the company distancing itself from diversity initiatives in anticipation of a second Trump administration, the company declined to comment.
Liam also notes that the trans character will remain in the series, according to a person familiar with the matter, who added that the decision to remove the plot point was made a couple of months ago.
Bottom line: Iger isn’t going to kiss the ring quite as transparently as some of his peers. But he appears to be wagering that the media empire he helped build over the past two decades can survive the next four years only if it treads carefully along the path of least resistance.
