Disney’s new CEO faces decisive test in Trump fight

A week ago, newly installed Disney CEO Josh D’Amaro was selling investors on a vision of Disney Plus as the company’s “digital centerpiece.” By last Friday, his focus had likely pivoted to a high-stakes confrontation with the Trump administration over the boundaries of free speech.

Disney-owned ABC has now formally accused the administration of violating its First Amendment rights through an ongoing investigation into the talk show The View. D’Amaro, who previously ran Disney’s parks division, may have hoped his legacy would revolve around corporate synergy and a revamped streaming platform. Instead, this clash with Donald Trump and the Federal Communications Commission looks set to define his tenure from the outset.

In its recent FCC filing, ABC argued that the agency is weaponizing the “equal time” rule to intimidate broadcasters. That rule requires radio and TV stations to give competing political candidates equivalent access and airtime. During this year’s midterm elections, The View featured segments with James Talarico and Jasmine Crockett, two Texas Democrats running for Senate seats. The FCC appears to be scrutinizing why no Republican candidates were invited to appear on the program.

ABC’s filing points out that The View was granted an exemption from the equal time rule “more than twenty years ago” because it qualifies as a “bona fide news interview program.” The network warned that targeting the show would “chill core First Amendment-protected speech for years and potentially decades to come.”

“The danger is that the government will simply decide which perspectives to regulate and which to leave undisturbed,” ABC stated. “In fact, while the Commission now questions The View’s decades-long exemption, it has not expressed any inclination to apply a similar interpretation of the equal opportunities rule to other broadcasters, including the many voices,conservative and liberal,on broadcast radio.”

Disney and ABC had clearly been trying to maintain a working relationship with the Trump administration, but that hasn’t stopped the president from again calling for Jimmy Kimmel’s firing and creating fresh headaches for the company. The FCC recently ordered Disney-owned ABC stations in eight markets to renew their broadcast licenses by May 28th, even though those licenses weren’t due for renewal until 2028. And while the current focus is on The View, the FCC signaled in January that it plans to more broadly revoke the equal time exemptions granted to other daytime and late-night talk shows.

No amount of prostration from Disney will keep Trump from going after the company

Paramount, by contrast, has fared well over the past year by capitulating to the Trump administration while negotiating an $8 billion acquisition deal with David Ellison’s Skydance. The company’s decision last summer to cancel The Late Show with Stephen Colbert was framed as a cost-saving measure. But that explanation rang hollow given the president’s long-running feud with Colbert through the FCC and the fact that Paramount and Skydance needed the agency’s regulatory sign-off to close their megamerger.

History shows that no amount of prostration from Disney will keep Trump from going after the company, because he sees it as a political enemy. That may not have been obvious to D’Amaro’s predecessors,Bob Iger, who agreed to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation suit in 2024, or Bob Chapek, who refused to condemn Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill even as Disney employees staged walkouts. But D’Amaro can no longer ignore this reality, because Trump and his allies are making it unmistakably clear through their actions.

In a recent letter addressed directly to D’Amaro, FCC Democratic Commissioner Anna M. Gomez said that by settling with Trump in 2024, Disney “told this Administration that pressure works.” She laid out how this pattern of hostile behavior underscores that “the First Amendment does not belong to this Administration to grant or withhold.”

“It belongs to the public, to the press, and to every broadcaster willing to defend it,” Gomez wrote. “Your journalists do work that matters to millions of Americans across the country, and the viewers who rose up to defend Jimmy Kimmel are the same viewers who will stand up again if this FCC follows through with its threat.”

Gomez is exactly right. The Trump administration is trying to browbeat ABC and Disney into humiliating submission under the pretense of fostering a healthy, fair media landscape. It’s obvious that the president is acting in his own self-interest, and that obviousness is all the more reason for Disney to feel empowered to call bullshit.

ABC’s assertion that the FCC is chilling free speech marks a notable shift for Disney, a company that spent years playing defense as conservatives attacked it for “woke” storytelling about marginalized groups. D’Amaro has seen that self-censorship and throwing money at the Trump administration will not stop the president from trying to harm Disney. Rather than following in his predecessors’ footsteps, he appears to understand that the only way forward is to fight back against Trump with the understanding that these matters may ultimately end up in court.

This could become an ugly, expensive, and exhausting legal battle that no CEO would welcome,especially during their first year on the job. But if D’Amaro wants to be seen as a leader who genuinely believes in his company and employees, he needs to put his boxing gloves on and get ready to fight, no matter how long it takes.