UPDATE: After a “thorough investigation into the sourcing” of their claims, Vice has now retracted their story in its entirety. We’ll leave the remainder of this story up for archival purposes only.
You know how Team Trump manages to screw up everything it touches through a combination of bombast, incompetence, and obsessive narcissism from the hairy citrus in charge? You'd think that even they could manage something as simple as promoting the majesty of Donald J. Trump to freakin' Disney World, but nope. They've made a hash of it.
Disney wanted to record a brief, fluffy message of unity 'n hope 'n stuff from Trump to be used in their Hall of Presidents, an attraction featuring animatronic versions of each of the U.S. presidents. Obama recorded a message. Bush recorded a message. When it comes to Trump, however, Team Trump has told Disney to forget the unity and hope and fluff bits: Team Trump be writing the damn speech and Disney can take it or leave it. Motherboard:
"The Imagineers [the researchers and developers behind Disney's theme park attractions] tried to point out that they're typically involved with this process," continued the source. "That they directly collaborated with Clinton, Bush, and Obama's people when it came to figuring out what the President's Audio-Animatronic figure would say. Trump's people said, 'No. We're writing this speech. You guys have no input on this.'"
And so, left to Trump’s own devices, it's entirely likely that some future Trump robot will be telling vacationing children about the size of his electoral college win or about how great his golf courses are. The man doesn't do “unity,” and certainly doesn’t do it upon polite request.
So the Hall of Presidents remains closed while Disney World, of all freakin' places, waits for Team Trump to provide them a usable recording of Donald Trump bragging about being president, which is pretty much what Donald Trump already does every day, all day to begin with. The good news is that this may save us all from the hell of a Talking Robot Trump:
"There are those at Imagineering who hope that if they hold off on doing anything with this attraction until the fall, Trump may have done something so egregious that the general public won't have an issue with putting a non-talking version of [Trump] in The Hall of Presidents," said the source.
That would be a good bet. If Donald finds himself impeached or quits in a huff or, well, just continues to be the worst-regarded Oval Office denizen since Richard Nixon, there will be few vacationers wanting to set themselves down in front of a shouting version of that no matter how good the air-conditioning is. If Disney returns to the more traditional olden-days format of having just Robot Abraham Lincoln give the final "unity" speech, while all the other robots sit quietly and wonder what’s on the menu for robot dinner after their shift is over, it will be far easier to put a dignified paper bag over Robot Trump's head and just pretend this whole last bit never happened.
But you have to be impressed at the Trump team's ability to completely screw up even a simple recorded message meant to honor Donald Trump. They're trying, mind you, but the compulsion to be complete assholes to everyone is just too strong.