Disney really turned a Hillary robot into Trump

I know we’ve tried to banish as much time as possible from our collective memory, but if you remember Donald Trump’s presidency and the year 2017 in particular, you may recall one of the strangest stories ever told It starred Disney, an animatronic robot, and Hillary Clinton.

It was never confirmed, but once Disney unveiled its bizarrely deformed version of Trump for the Hall of Presidents, People looked at it and thought:hrm, that certainly looks like they made a robot out of Hillary Clinton, assuming she would win, and then had to rush to change him to Trump after his surprise surprise.

Then a series of other scares, pandemics and constitutional crises happened, and we all forgot about it. Until this week When podcaster Alex Goldman — after speaking to a former Disney employee who was there at the time but wished to remain anonymous — released a report that said:…that’s pretty much what happened.

The source (a former Disney “Imagineer”) says that in 2016, Disney execs hedged their bets and had a Hillary made to keep the show open for as long as possible — it usually has to stay closed for months while a new presidential robot is built and its lines recorded at the time in advance.

“I remember seeing the facial designs for the Hillary animatronics at least six months before the election,” they recall, “and an intern asked the 3D artist what would happen if Trump won, and he laughed and just said, ‘Then we’ve screwed up again'”.

While this employee says he knew early on about the decision to build Hillary, which is interesting in itself, he can’t confirm that the Trump animatronics we eventually saw were the exact same robot . “I suspect they probably originally tried to save the animatronics by keeping Hillary’s skull and putting Trump’s skin over it,” they conclude, given the news of Hillary’s formation in 2016 and his ultimately bizarre face now seems 99.99% likely. But as we learned from the 2016 polls, 99.99% isn’t 100%, so keep that in mind.

(Note that following President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election, the attraction was closed for the construction of his animatronics, Trump’s portrayal was also saved to look much more realistic).

Oh, and before you stop thinking about Disney animatronics for a day/month/year, Be sure to check out Goldman’s full blog for a bonus anecdote about “at least a dozen Ellen Degeneres animatronics.”.