Embattled Disney Hires Former Clinton Campaign Staffer for Key Role
A leading advocate of gay marriage who helped spread Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s message is now the lead spokeswoman for the embattled Disney brand.
The Walt Disney Co. announced Tuesday that it has hired Kristina Schake as vice president of global communications.
“She will be responsible for our worldwide communications strategy and operations, and serve as the Company’s lead spokesperson,” the company said.
We’re pleased to welcome Kristina Schake as Executive Vice President of Global Communications. She will be responsible for our worldwide communications strategy and operations, and serve as the Company’s lead spokesperson. https://t.co/F0uWgViwQ9 pic.twitter.com/lJnZIDMSKK
— Walt Disney Company (@WaltDisneyCo) April 5, 2022
Schake was involved in the PR messaging for the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination push and was deputy communications director for Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, according to Deadline.
Her left-leaning qualifications also include a stint as global communications director for Instagram, special assistant to former President Barack Obama and communications director for former first lady Michelle Obama.
Geoff Morrell, Disney’s chief corporate affairs officer, praised Schake in the company’s news release.
“Her experience in the public and private sectors, in political and corporate campaigns, make her ideally suited for this important role and to help me integrate communications with government relations, public policy, and corporate social responsibility into a new Corporate Affairs team,” he said.
“Together with the exceptional professionals at Disney, we will help the world’s greatest storytelling company engage even more effectively with our many stakeholders around the world,” Morrell said.
But the Media Research Center viewed the appointment differently.
“Clearly, The Walt Disney Company is pushing full-steam ahead with harnessing their cultural power in the service of left-wing political and sexual agendas. Hiring Schake as their spokeswoman is just the latest indication that they don’t intend to hit the ideological breaks anytime soon,” it said Wednesday.
In 2009, Schake co-founded the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which advocated for same-sex marriage in California, Deadline reported. The group disbanded after the 2015 Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage.
Disney is in the midst of a PR battle that began when it criticized Florida legislation banning instruction on gender identity and sexuality in kindergarten through the third grade.
Although Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized the company for inaccurately framing the parents’ rights law and interfering in legislation it did not understand, far-left elements at Disney complained that the company did not do enough to try to stop the law.
That led to internal company meetings in which Disney executives were revealed to be aggressively working to push an LGBT agenda in its programming and at its theme parks.
Latoya Raveneau, executive producer for Disney Television Animation, said she was “basically adding queerness” to anything she could, according to a video obtained by journalist Christopher Rufo.
SCOOP: I’ve obtained video from inside Disney’s all-hands meeting about the Florida parental rights bill, in which executive producer Latoya Raveneau says her team has implemented a “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” and is regularly “adding queerness” to children’s programming. pic.twitter.com/eJnZMpKIXT
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
In another video Rufo shared, Karey Burke, Disney’s president of general entertainment content, said her goal was to have at least 50 percent of Disney characters be LGBT or racial minorities.
SCOOP: Disney corporate president Karey Burke says, “as the mother [of] one transgender child and one pansexual child,” she supports having “many, many, many LGBTQIA characters in our stories” and wants a minimum of 50 percent of characters to be LGBTQIA and racial minorities. pic.twitter.com/oFRUiuu9JG
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) March 29, 2022
Rufo summed it up by saying Disney is “deliberately trying to take programming that goes from even ages 2 to 7 years old and inject queerness into that programming.”
“They’re trying to really make all of their programs this left-wing gender ideology compatible,” he said in a March 30 interview on Fox News with Tucker Carlson.
He said the leaked videos he shared “document that whatever these activists say, they’re now creating a tracking program for all Disney children’s content to find out exactly how many transgender, asexual and bisexual characters [whom] they’re peppering into the show, either in the foreground or the background.”
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