Raise Your Hand If You Knew The Potential Next CEO Of Disney/ABC Is A Close Friend of Kamala Harris Going Back 30 Years

This story bubbled up in mid-August by was swept aside by the coverage of the DNC Convention of "Joy."

The picture above has Dana Walden and Linsey Davis flanking Kamala Harris.

Linsey Davis was one of the two debate moderators from ABC News.

Dana Walden is one of four candidates to succeed Bob Iger as the next CEO of The Walt Disney Company. The Disney Board of Directors will nominate the likely successor when it names a new No. 2 at Disney early next year, with that person being the presumptive candidate to take over from Iger at the end of 2026 — he’s already retired once.

Walden is currently Co-Chairman of Disney Entertainment, one of three major divisions of The Walt Disney Company. She was promoted into that spot from her previous position as Chair of Walt Disney Television, supervising all aspects of Disney television operations — including ABC and ABC News. All of Disney Television was moved into the newly established Disney Entertainment division in 2023 by Iger, and Walden was named Co-Chairman along with Alan Bergman, who oversaw all Disney movie production. In addition to Bergman, other candidates to take over for Iger are the head of Disney Parks, and the head of ESPN who oversees all of Disney’s sports media.

Walden is not a Disney lifer. She joined Disney as part of Disney’s acquisition of 20th Century Fox in 2019, where she was head of the Fox Television Group. She quickly rose through Disney’s corporate management on the television side, but has had little involvement in the movie production business or other aspects of Disney.

In April of this year a profile done on her by CNBC identified her as being personally close to the current CEO Iger — they live only blocks from each other and take walks together — and is thought to be Iger’s favorite to succeed him when his contract ends in 2026. With her background in television production, she is a favorite of the “creatives” in Hollywood, while some question whether she has the business chops to be an effective CEO where the job goes far beyond simply knowing what television shows might be hit and being able to draw Hollywood “A Listers” to a fancy party for important people.

Disney has had only 2 CEOs over the past 40 years — Michael Eisner from 1984 to 2005, and Robert Iger from 2005 to the present. There was a brief period in Robert Chapek was CEO from 2020 to 2022, but Iger remained active on the Board and was brought back to run the company when Chapek’s changes were widely criticized, leading the Board to fire him.

Describing Dana Walden as a “power broker” currently in Hollywood would be a bit of an understatement. But, her position now is nothing compared to what she will be if she is named by the Board to be Iger’s successor in 2026.

And…. she’s been close friends with Kamala Harris since the 1990s when Harris first came to public attention as the girlfriend of married California Democrat power broker Willie Brown, the Speaker of the California Assembly. Walden has contributed to every campaign for office Harris has been involved in, starting with her run for District Attorney of San Francisco in 2003.

Back in mid-August the New York Times ran a story (paywalled) on the historical relationship between Harris and Walden. Walden and her husband have hosted fundraisers for Harris at their Brentwood neighborhood in Los Angeles, and at one such fundraiser in 2022, Harris credited the Waldens for her marriage to Doug Emhoff. Matt Walden and Emhoff have known each other since the 1980s.

So, when ABC News was named to host the debate last week, assigning Linsey Davis and David Muir to be moderators, there’s no mystery about what their unspoken marching orders were. While Disney and ABC News have made all the predictable claims about the editorial independence of ABC News, and that Walden had no input on how the debate was handled, it is “laugh out loud” funny to suggest the few dozen people involved in producing the debate last week were not possessed by the idea what they could not embarrass or damage the election prospects of the BFF of the woman who is their current boss’s boss, and who also be in line to lead the biggest player in news and entertainment in the world.

The career of anyone at ABC News can be ended with a one-line email from Walden.

In the aftermath of the debate performance of the ABC moderators, there has now emerged a purported letter from a “whistleblower” who works at ABC News claiming that special arrangements were made by ABC with the Harris campaign for how certain aspects of the debate would be handled. The existence of this affidavit was the subject of speculation starting two days after the debate but a copy did not surface. That changed early in the day on September 15, with the posting on X of a six page typewritten statement that is said to be that affidavit.

All identifying information in the document has been redacted. There is no way at this point to know whether this is a bona fide document or something created to simply carry forward a story impugning the integrity of ABC News and those responsible for producing of the debate. Taking that into consideration, the information in the statement is shocking — if it is from a bona fide ABC News employee in a position to know this information.

The statement is dated September 9, 2024, and there is a redacted Notary jurat for the State of New York on the last page. Again — because parts of the jurat are redacted, it is not possible to know whether all of that information was simply faked. The statement says on the next to last page that it is dated and signed on September 9 to establish that the information was disclosed prior to the debate taking place on September 10.

Again — I’m not vouching for the legitimacy of the document that has been posted, but here are some screen shots of what it alleges:

None of these subjects were the subject of questions by the moderators during the debate. The only one that probably falls outside of anticipated public interest would have been anything about her brother-in-law Tony West, who is married to her sister. But he is a “person of interest” to me and I will be writing about him in the very near future.

Another subject that went completely unmentioned in the debate was China and the CCP. Not a single question — other than tangentially related to Trump’s tariffs and trade policy — was put to Harris about the Biden Administration’s policies towards China or the business relationships between Hunter Biden and various CCP controlled entities in China that resulted in millions of dollars being paid to Hunter and other Biden family members.

Criticisms of China would strike close to home for ABC and Disney, as The Walt Disney Company has a massive amount of money tied up in its various entanglements with China. Not only is there a Disney park in China, Disney Entertainment includes Lucas Film/Star Wars, Marvel Studios, and Pixar. In the past all have received billions in revenue from Chinese consumers in the form of revenue from tickets to blockbuster movies from all three studios.

It is simply beyond dispute that Dana Walden is heavily invested, personally and professionally, in Harris winning the 2024 election and becoming President for the next four years.

No one at ABC News was going to commit career suicide by doing anything during the September 10 Presidential Debate to do damage to her chances.

In fact, quite the opposite is true and more than 60 million viewers watched that very fact play out right before their eyes on their television screens.