Josh Daws spent 12.5 years at The Walt Disney Company. He worked on Disney blogs, ShopDisney, and most recently ESPN Fantasy Sports. On April 15, Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro cut 1,000 employees company-wide, and Daws was among them. An hour later, he posted on X: “I was just laid off from The Walt Disney Company after 12.5 years with the company. Ask me anything.”
The thread went viral within hours.
The questions poured in from every direction including fans, critics, journalists, and the terminally curious. What came back was not the scorched-earth takedown many anticipated. Daws answered carefully, honestly, and at times with a candor that landed harder than any polemic would have.
On DEI inside Disney: “Peaked in 2020 and has been in steady decline since then. It’s much better internally now. The vibe shift is real.”
He said the same thing again when pressed from a different angle: “Not a fan, but they’ve toned it down a ton since Trump was elected. The vibe shift is real.”
Daws, a Christian, was asked directly why Disney seemed to despise conservative Christians while pushing an LGBTQ agenda at every turn. His answer cut through years of culture war noise: “Very small and vocal minority of the company. Most folks just want to make cool stuff.”
Disney’s critics have spent years treating the company as a monolith of ideological malice. Daws, who was inside the building for twelve and a half years, says the people actually ruining things were never representative of the broader workforce. The 2022 leaked “not-at-all-secret gay agenda” all-hands meeting, which Daws confirmed attending, was the product of a small faction. The rank and file had other concerns.
He dismissed the theory that Disney employees were deliberately sabotaging Star Wars and other franchises. “Nah. No one wants to make crap.” Poor creative direction and ideological tunnel vision, not malice, drove the failures.
On AI’s role in his firing: “On the grand scale, probably to some degree. On the small scale it’s probably more to do with me being remote. Remote workers are easier to cut.” He also dropped a candid verdict on Disney’s new leadership: “I think the new CEO needs to make some big moves to instill confidence in the market.”
His overall outlook on the company’s future was measured. “Cautiously optimistic. I’m rooting for them. America needs a healthy Disney.”
Disney has not responded to press inquiries about Daws’ claims. D’Amaro, who officially became CEO on March 18, now owns the aftermath.
What Daws confirmed on the record lines up with what outside observers have been saying since 2024: the political monoculture inside Disney’s content divisions was never as absolute as the loudest voices made it sound, and it is contracting. That does not rehabilitate the years of franchise damage under Bob Iger’s second tenure or the ideological casting decisions across Star Wars and Marvel. But it complicates the simplest version of the story.
The question fans are left with is whether Disney’s “vibe shift” produces anything on screen, or whether the bureaucratic habits of six bad years outlast the people who built them.
What do you think?
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