President-elect Donald Trump praised former Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter for leaving Disney and dumping all of his fat stakes in the “woke” House of Mouse.
During an event Monday at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump said of Perlmutter to his supporters: “The guy went from being really bad to being owned by Disney.”
“Then he got out of Disney because they woke up,” he continued, speaking of the former executive, who was in attendance. “He didn’t want to wake Donald Duck, did he?”
Disney CEO Bob Iger ousted the then-80-year-old Perlmutter in 2023 after his division — which was separate from Marvel Studios — was absorbed into other company units due to cost-cutting measures.
The billionaire, who sold Marvel Entertainment to Disney in 2009 and has long been known to clash with Iger, sold his entire stake — about 25.6 million shares — for nearly $3 billion earlier this year.
In the past three years, critics such as the conservative nonprofit American First Legal have blasted Disney for its “smart agenda,” which they claim has hurt the company financially and taken away family-friendly programming and fueled a ” anti-police and anti-white content.”
Perlmutter — an Israeli-born toy entrepreneur known for carrying a gun in a holster and who claimed to have started his business career in the US with $250 in his pocket — had pushed that friend and activist investor Nelson Peltz to join Disney. board at that time.
When he had no luck, Peltz launched a proxy battle to be installed on the board, vowing to cut costs and revamp Disney’s money-losing broadcast business, as well as fix the botched scheduling of continuity of the company.
Peltz stepped down in February 2023 when Iger returned to head Disney with a plan to restructure, cut costs and likely restore Disney’s dividend.
The move had put Perlmutter’s future in question ahead of the cuts, which included cutting 7,000 jobs at the time.
Perlmutter’s career at Disney had declined in recent years.
In 2015, the Marvel chair clashed with Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige, who he wanted to fire, according to Iger, who spoke about the incident in a 2023 interview with CNBC.
The Disney boss stopped that from happening, which reportedly angered Perlmutter.
Shortly thereafter, Feige reorganized Marvel Studios, centralizing the film division under himself with Perlmutter overseeing the television division.
Perlmutter later lost oversight of Marvel’s television shows in 2019 and found himself limited to smaller businesses such as comic book publishing and certain consumer products until recently.
Although Perlmutter hasn’t been involved in any Marvel movies since 2015, he helped the company greatly expand its merchandising business by licensing properties like “X-Men” and “Spider-Man” to movie studios.
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