Well, here’s another entry on the list of organisations Donald Trump is engaging in some kind of deep blood feud with: Disney World.
Basically, the drama centres around a single attraction at the theme part: an unquestionably lame 23-minute ride through American history named The Hall of Presidents. The ride features animatronic versions of every president up until Barack Obama, who do incredible tricks like ‘sitting in a chair and standing up again’ and ‘waving’.
Here it is in all its glory, if you’re interested in that kind of thing:
As you can see, the final part – which has existed since 1993 – is a very generic inspirational speech from a robot version of the current president. Try explaining that one to the aliens when they land.
Now, drama’s been brewing for a couple of months now about Trump, who is incapable of delivering a generically inspirational speech that doesn’t involve denigrating someone for their race or religion, so Disney’s been dragging their feet on making the Trumpbot happen.
Hall of Presidents at @WaltDisneyWorld closed as they add a mechanical President Trump pic.twitter.com/NAToFIh6Ko
— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) March 27, 2017
But it’s not been clear exactly what’s taking so long internally, among all the petitions from fans to ditch the Trump bust – or, at the very least, not let it make a speech. There were rumours, reported by Motherboard, that planners intended to revert to the pre-1993 form of the show, where the current president doesn’t make a speech at all, and Abraham Lincoln takes the reigns instead.
Well, there’s more to it, apparently. According to Motherboard again – who clearly have a mole on the inside of Disney World’s labyrinthine workings – the big problem here has been Trump’s team, who demand to write the speech themselves.
“When Disney tried to get this process started earlier this year,” a source told Motherboard, “Trump’s people said, ‘We’ll be writing the speech that the President’s Audio-Animatronic figure will be saying.’”
They were apparently pretty damn adamant about this:
The Imagineers [ tried to point out that they’re typically involved with this process – that they directly collaborated with Clinton, Bush, and Obama’s people when it came to figuring out what the President’s Audio-Animatronic figure would say. Trump’s people said, ‘No. We’re writing this speech. You guys have no input on this.’
“Disney officials are bending over backwards in an effort not to be seen as disrespectful towards President Trump,” the source said.
Well, that’s all massively stupid. There’s only one solution I see: bulldoze The Hall Of Presidents immediately.
Source: Motherboard.
Photo: Getty Images.
