Josh D'Amaro is already managing to look like the worst kind of Disney successor: a man walking into a fire with a gas can and a press statement.
What jumped out at me in this latest round of controversy is not just the ongoing mess around The View, or the mounting frustration around ABC programming in general. It is the posture. The instinct. The arrogance. Instead of reading the room, D'Amaro seems to be doing what too many Disney executives do when the audience turns on them: blame the audience, blame the critics, blame "false narratives," and pretend the public is too stupid to recognize political programming when it is staring them in the face.
That is a terrible way to begin 2026.
According to the claims now circulating around this latest media storm, D'Amaro pushed back hard against criticism of The View, defending the show and its hosts while insisting the program is not political and has never been agenda-driven. If that is truly the line Disney wants to take, then I have to ask a very simple question: who exactly do they think they are fooling?
The View has built its identity on political conflict, ideological signaling, and culture-war provocation. That is not some wild conspiracy theory cooked up by bitter critics. That is the product. The show is designed to generate reaction. It thrives on outrage, tribal applause, and the daily performance of moral superiority. You cannot run that formula for years and then suddenly act shocked when viewers call it propaganda.
And this is where D'Amaro looks especially weak.
A stronger CEO would have acknowledged the obvious. He would have said the network hears the backlash, understands that a large part of the audience is exhausted, and plans to take a serious look at what ABC is putting on the air. Instead, the message coming out of Disney sounds defensive, brittle, and weirdly hostile. The public says the programming feels political. Disney replies that the public is pushing a narrative. That is not leadership. That is damage control with a smile taped on.
I have seen this act before, and so have you. Bob Iger perfected it. Dress up the problem in polished corporate language, accuse the critics of bad faith, and hope the brand is still powerful enough to steamroll the backlash. Maybe D'Amaro learned from Iger directly. Maybe he just absorbed the same instincts from the same machine. Either way, the result is the same: Disney keeps talking like a company that believes criticism is the problem, not the content.
That is why the broader ABC mess matters. It is not just The View. It is the sense that Disney leadership no longer knows the difference between entertainment and political sermonizing, and worse, no longer cares. When Jimmy Kimmel, The View, and other high-profile personalities all become flashpoints at the same time, that is not random bad luck. That is a programming culture problem.
Investors notice that. Audiences notice that. Even people who are not terminally online notice it.
The deeper panic here is obvious. If Disney executives were truly confident in the strength of these shows, they would not need to scold the public for rejecting them. They would let the numbers speak. But the numbers are exactly what make this so ugly. When ratings slide and the backlash grows, every public statement starts to sound less like confidence and more like a plea.
D'Amaro may think he is protecting ABC. What he is really doing is confirming the criticism.
And if this is his opening act as Disney's new boss, it is a bad one.
Music in the intro and outro by Mike Zeroh.
Animated intro designed by https://www.youtube.com/user/w0r3xDCze
