On Wednesday night, a conservative Disney employee who is running for Congress in Florida told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham that Disney was making a “terrible miscalculation that ultimately will be bad for business” by publicly opposing the Florida Parental Rights in Education law that GOP Governor Ron DeSantis signed this week.
(Disclosure: The Daily Wire has announced plans for kids entertainment content.)
Ingraham opened by asking, “Are you concerned first and foremost about your job, your job security by speaking out here tonight?”
“Honestly, it’s no secret here in Central Florida that I’m running for Congress, I’m a Disney worker, and I’m a strong conservative,” Jose Castillo answered. “To be honest with you, I’m not concerned about my job because I think if I were to get fired for my views I think it would send a message to conservatives; that conservatives are not welcome at Disney.”
“I know that right now it seems like there’s a misconception — this is what I tell people — there’s a misconception out there that everyone at Disney is just raging liberals,” he continued. “I think that cannot be farther from the truth. From my perspective as a candidate running for Congress, I have tons of people working for the Walt Disney Company that reach out to me daily on social media.”
“I’m glad you’re happy at Disney, but I can tell you what: after people saw what they saw in those videos, they’re not happy at all,” Ingraham pointed out. “Someone who is a traditional conservative, social conservative, a serious Christian or frankly, any other faith, is now being told that Disney’s purpose, political purpose, is to ensure that kindergartners to third grade are taught about sexual orientation. That is the hill that Disney wants to die on after making billions off of families who are traditionalists. That’s the problem here. That’s the problem.”
“I think they’re making a terrible miscalculation that ultimately will be bad for business,” Castillo declared. “Their statement says this about the bill that Ron DeSantis passed; they said, ‘Our goal as a company is for the law to be repealed by the legislature or struck down by the courts.’”
“And the Left, they talk about democracy after this election, so what about our democracy right now?” he continued. “The people of Florida, a lot of Disney cast members, voted for our state legislature. These are duly elected members of the Florida House of Representatives and the Florida Senate who passed this bill, sent it to the governor, and thank God our governor has the backbone to stand up to companies like mine, Disney to stand with the people of Florida, stand with the parents to protect our children.”
Ingraham pointed out that a new poll showed a majority of Democrats disapproved of kindergartners through third-graders being taught about sexual orientation in class. She commented, “The numbers are huge; again, Disney going with the far-left extremists, which, I can’t imagine what Walt Disney would think today.
Castillo asserted, “The reason that’s happening is because, there’s this saying, squeaky wheel gets the grease. And a small minority within the Walt Disney Company that’s part of the LGBT community are screaming the loudest.”
Another alleged Disney employee, using the pseudonym Ethan L. Clay, wrote a lengthy, powerful essay on Quillette.com Tuesday in which it stated:
It’s incredible that a company—particularly a company whose brand is family-friendly content—would oppose the perfectly reasonable view that sexual topics are not appropriate for six-year-olds in a public school setting. The bill puts the onus back on parents, rather than public schools, to decide how and if these conversations happen. That perspective can be debated, but it is not wrong a priori, and a very large number of Florida voters agree with it. But Disney isn’t interested in allowing a genuine debate or conversation to occur, it simply wants to satisfy the DEI activists so they stop making trouble and bad headlines for the company. The result is that they parrot the party line, offer craven apologies, and ignore and silence opposition.