DeSantis just cost Florida $1 Billion by picking a fight with the Magic Kingdom to play to a small base of primary voters. He was warned by pro-business Republicans to stop the political posturing against Disney and Bob Iger. So inevitable & unnecessary. https://t.co/BuwXdWRYrV

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) May 18, 2023

Mickey Mouse Is Starting to Get Revenge on Ron DeSantis: DeSantis is discovering that he can't push Disney around the way he can public-school teachers and transgender teens. https://t.co/jYMWcCa2dy via @intelligencer

— Lesley Abravanel 🪩 (@lesleyabravanel) May 19, 2023

Refreshingly, Democratic state Rep. Anna Eskamani, whose district includes Orlando, weighed in with a statement singularly significant for its rational balance. Oh, wait.

“Governor Ron DeSantis is a job killing moron who cares more about his own political ambitions and culture wars than Florida and our future,” Eskamani said. “According to him, ‘woke makes you go broke’ but this is another example of how it’s actually the complete opposite. DeSantis is not who you want for President — ever.”

Headline writers for the Washington Post and CBS harmonized from the same hymnal page: 

WaPo: Disney nixes big Florida project, a fresh blow amid feud with DeSantis

CBS: Disney is pulling out of a $1 billion investment in Florida amid DeSantis feud

Similar headlines turned up in the Los Angeles Times, Business Insider, PBS, and, not to be outdone, Salon, which was particularly en fuego: “DeSantis just cost Florida $1 billion”: Disney yanks massive project and 2,000 jobs amid GOP feud.

Salon’s quote is lifted from a tweet by still-stewing Andrew Warren, famous as Hillsborough County’s erstwhile state attorney general, suspended last August for declaring he would not prosecute duly passed Florida statutes that offended his sensibilities.

Now that DeSantis's childish fight with @Disney has cost Floridians $1 billion & 2,000 jobs, he should take all the money he's raised to run for President and invest it in Florida to repay our citizens. Hurting our economy to score political points is so DeStupid.

— Andrew Warren (@AndrewWarrenFL) May 18, 2023

Then there’s this atop a hysterical, fact-massaging column (among its shortcomings: he scolds a law denying “gender-affirming care” without acknowledging its focus on minors) from USA Today’s Rex Huppke: Disney nixes $1 billion Florida development, latest casualty in DeSantis’ ‘war on woke’.

The Post’s subhead at least tries to get it right: 

Citing ‘considerable changes’ to business conditions, Disney canceled plans for an office complex expected to bring more than 2,000 jobs to Orange County.

But there is accurate, and there is manipulation based largely on the assertions of anonymous sources. Accordingly, those who despise Florida’s governor for his forthright promotion of conservative norms, and who are noisy if not necessarily legion, have, out of convenience, mangled “considerable changes to business conditions” to mean, “Because DeSantis was mean to Mickey’s LGBTQ+ pals.”

Never mind the real business conditions depressing the House of the Mouse, as alertly noted by Ed Thursday when news of the Florida campus broke.

To reiterate Disney’s current reality:

• Layoffs numbering about 7,000.
• Cost-cutting of $5.5 billion.
• Disney+ subscriber slippage, coupled with plans to merge the streaming service with Hulu.
• An ongoing free cash-flow squeeze at a time when Disney may need to scrape together capital to buy out Comcast’s share of Hulu.
• An all-streaming future for Disney subsidiary ESPN.
• Persistent downward pressure on profits and share price.

Add to the mix that past-and-current Disney CEO Bob Iger never was keen on the Florida campus proposal, and that most of the employees who would have been affected — Disney Imagineers — absolutely hated it, and, voila, the real-world recipe for “considerable changes to business conditions.”

More confounding, though, is the number of Republicans — some declared or rumored presidential candidates — who also declared, on zero available evidence, that Disney yanked the plug to spite DeSantis. Do better, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, and Francis Suarez (he’s Miami’s mayor).

We should recap, ever so briefly right here and right now, how this came about: Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek was initially silent about Florida’s Parental Rights in Education bill; then, when employees began to grumble, suggested the Legislature reconsider; then, when that proved insufficient in the employee ranks, became a full-throated opponent; and, finally, threw Disney’s eye-popping financial support behind groups that battle so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation.

Because 10-year-olds should be able to change their pronouns week-by-week, confused or trend-chasing pre-teens should be subject to profitable medical experimentation, and youngsters in grades K-3 should have shelves groaning with books such as these:

• Gender Queer: A Memoir – an explicit, pornographic book showing sex acts.

• Flamer – a graphic book about young boys performing sexual acts at a summer camp.

• This Book Is Gay – a book containing instructions on “the ins and outs of gay sex.”

• Let’s Talk About It – a book that contains graphic depictions about how to masturbate for males and females.

So, even if the worst-case scenario is correct, Florida will be deprived of 2,000 residents with ritzy paychecks because some portion of the Disney Co. workforce wants Sunshine State little ones exposed to/indoctrinated into radically alternative lifestyles.

Where’s that frozen-head reanimation when we need it?

In other news: 1,200 Americans relocate to Florida every day, seeking whatever it is we have in abundance. (It can’t just be the authentic Cuban food … can it?) So, the Disney decision has cost the Sunshine State 1.75 days of new residents. The horror!

Unchanged in all of this, however, is Disney’s plan to create 1,400 “affordable and attainable” apartments on 80 acres a 15-minute drive west of the Magic Kingdom. The first of those units will come available in 2026, about the time someone — current Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, it says here — will be the frontrunner to become Florida’s next elected governor.

Moreover, the company’s scheme to invest $17 billion over 10 years into Walt Disney World remains steadfast, resort president Jeff Vahle said in a statement tied to the announcement about the sidelined campus.

Opportunistic opponents of Ron DeSantis’ hard-nosed commitment to conservative governance and traditional values can (and will) make of the latest Disney what they will. 

The unalloyed facts suggest something altogether different.