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Disney Chief: My role on a Trump panel is ‘not an endorsement’

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GETTY IMAGES VIA NYT

Robert A. Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, with volunteers at Shanghai Disney Resort during its grand opening in June 2016.

LOS ANGELES >> The Walt Disney Co.’s annual shareholder meeting on Wednesday brought the company’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, face to face with a smattering of people who demanded that he resign from President Donald Trump’s business policy forum.

“The question is about endorsement,” said Mehrdad Azemun, from Chicago, echoing two others who had spoken. None of the three who broached the topic with Iger were shareholders. They were acting as proxies for groups of shareholders

“By staying on the economic council it looks like you are tacitly endorsing Trump’s policies,” added Azemun, who identified himself as Iranian-American. He complained about “anti-women and anti-immigrant” policies and decisions by Trump.

Iger objected strongly, saying that he had no plans to step down and that his involvement was “not an endorsement at all of the policies of the new administration.” The shareholder meeting was in Denver and was streamed live on the internet.

On the topic of the Trump administration’s immigration plans, Iger said that he believed in “an open and a fair and a just immigration policy.”

He added, “A policy that is open to the world is vital to the future success of the Walt Disney Company and to this country.”

Iger, a Democrat, is the lone Hollywood executive on the President’s Strategic and Policy Forum, a group of more than a dozen chief executives who advise the administration on economic matters. In the wake of Trump’s immigration order in January against refugees and seven Muslim-majority countries, some participants have faced immense pressure from customers to quit. (The executive order has been revised to bar citizens of six predominantly Muslim countries.)

Travis Kalanick, the chief executive of Uber, did just that. Elon Musk, the chief of Tesla, said he would use the forum to “offer suggestions for changes” to the action on immigration.

Iger has faced criticism online, including calls for a Disney boycott, and from a group called SumOfUs, which has been pushing a petition accusing him and other forum members of being “complicit” in the administration’s “cruel and un-American policies.”

In response to two other shareholder representatives at the meeting who criticized him for participating in the forum — one who said with a quivering voice that she would avoid Disney products — Iger contended that his involvement was largely about access to the president, which he said he would use to express the inclusionary values that Disney advocates in its films and television series, which include “Zootopia,” about ending prejudice; “black-ish,” the stereotype-challenging ABC series; and the cartoon “Elena of Avalor,” featuring a Latina princess.

“I think it’s actually a privileged opportunity to have a voice in the room,” Iger said. “I made a decision that I thought was in the best interest of this company, to have an opportunity to express my point of view directly to the president of the United States.”

He added, “I assure you that the values that I speak of are expressed whenever I get the chance.”

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