Stranger things have happened, but this one conspiracy theory might actually be true. Alex Goldman, the former host of the once-heralded, now-defunct podcast Reply All, may have just cracked the code on whether Disney replaced the skin of a Hillary Clinton robot with that of Donald Trump.
Goldman explored the conspiracy theory on his Substack after his tweet on the matter went proper viral just a few weeks ago. The story goes that as Disney prepared The Hall of Presidents in Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World just before the 2016 election, the company was anticipating a Hillary Clinton win. As such, Disney began creating a Clinton animatronic to sit amongst the dozens of male presidents our nation had had prior to her. Tragedy struck, however, on November 8 of that year when Donald Trump was named president. Goldman claims that as a result, Disney hastily reconstructed their Clinton animatronic as a Trump animatronic and the results are…not great.
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Goldman writes:
I’m not a phrenologist or anything, but there’s something uniquely hillary-esque about robo-Donald’s face. It’s especially apparent in the eyes, which feel much brighter and more open than Trump’s typically are, and around the mouth. The HoP Donald has an upper lip, which is more than one can say about real life Donald, and the way the skin forms along the jawline on either side of the chin is very, very Hillary. Hillary also has a much rounder face than Donald does, as does the Trumpamatronic.
In the wake of Goldman’s tweet going viral (a tweet he has since deleted), an anonymous Disney Imagineer slid into his DM’s to confirm the conspiracy theory. According to this source, The Hall of Presidents closes down for months after a new president is elected in order to create a new figure for the new leader of the free world and get a recording of them giving their spiel. Since animatronics can take months, even years, to develop, Disney was committed to reducing that downtime as much as possible and began developing the Clinton animatronic under the assumption that she would win.
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“I remember seeing the facial designs for the Hillary animatronic at least six months before the election and an intern asked the 3D artist what would happen if Trump won, and he laughed and just said, ‘Then, we’re screwed,’” this source told Goldman, as quoted in his Substack post.
It makes sense that Disney would rally behind Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election—most level-headed people did—especially as the company continues to hand Florida’s Republican governor Ron Desantis his own ass on a silver platter. Clinton wasn’t the best Democrat, but in the social justice race, she was eons ahead of Trump, whose platform famously was built upon prejudice and intolerance. Liberal and family-oriented Disney’s then-president Bob Iger was even a Clinton stan, having hosted a fundraiser for her in Hollywood the summer before the election. Assuming this source is actually an Imagineer who worked at Disney during the 2016 election (and Goldman says he vetted this source as best he could), it would appear that this is case closed.
At the same time, a new mystery has been born. The source also told Goldman that several animatronics based on Ellen Degeneres have been repurposed for other uses at Disney parks. Go find them, people!
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