The most magical place on earth is getting a reality check in the form of Donald Trump.
The 45th US president will be immortalized in Disney’s Hall of Presidents with a moving, speaking animatronic character that’s slated to be added in late 2017. Every sitting president has done this since Bill Clinton in 1993. The 44th president, Barack Obama, talked about unity in his speech:
“We the people” means all the people. We may come from different places and believe in different things, but what makes us American is a shared spirit. A spirit of courage and determination, of kindness and generosity.
There is no word yet on what Trump will say when he voices his robot—but in terms of his back catalog, there is oh so much to choose from, from saying that when you’re successful around women (paywall), you can ”grab ’em by the pussy” and describing a female journalist who asked him difficult questions as having “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”
And that “when Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… they’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” Then there are his off-the-cuff, sometimes nonsensical phrases, such as “bigly” and “covfefe,” which were either mispronounced and misspelled, or used incorrectly. His frequently used terms like “Sad!” and “Tremendous” have become regular targets of parody. Some of those Trumpisms, like shouting “Fake news!” have also invaded the American lexicon.
Some have said Trump should not be given a voice at a reverential attraction frequented by children and families like the Hall of Presidents in Disney World’s Magic Kingdom. Nearly 15,000 people signed a Change.org petition to have him excluded from the attraction.
But as in the 2016 presidential election, the US president prevailed—and his robot will probably bring both of those successes up in his speech while he’s standing next to the Founding Fathers.
Disney CEO Bob Iger, who quit the president’s advisory council last month over Trump’s decision to leave the Paris climate accord, told CNN in May that a script had been written for Trump’s team to edit, and that Disney hoped to have the attraction ready by the first anniversary of Trump’s election in November. (Vice reported in May that the White House was dueling with Disney over the script. But it later took down the two stories that made those claims and published an editor’s note that said the stories contained “several factual errors.”)
“Despite some media reports to the contrary, president Trump will have a speaking role in The Hall of Presidents, like every president since 1993,” wrote Disney’s Thomas Smith in a blog post this week. “We have been working closely with the current White House—just as we have with previous administrations—and the president’s recording session has been scheduled. The attraction will reopen in late 2017.”