| schema:text
| - Despite years of speculation online and in traditional media, Disney has not publicly commented on whether or not a Donald Trump animatronic used in Disney World's Hall of Presidents attraction originally depicted Hillary Clinton.
For years, a rumor has circulated online that an animatronic version of former U.S. President Donald Trump that appeared in Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents attraction was originally designed to resemble Hillary Rodham Clinton, Trump's opponent in the 2016 presidential election.
In 2024, for example β in the months before Trump was elected to serve a nonconsecutive second term β one X post identifying (archived) the claim as the poster's "goofiest low-stakes conspiracy theory" had received around 107,000 likes and 4,800 reposts at the time of this writing.
You know which one is mine: the Trump animatronic from Hall of Presidents is a hastily retooled Hillary https://t.co/15tZmdCueQ pic.twitter.com/rK0QzczmG5
β Nikolajπ₯₯π΄ππΊπ¦ (@nikicaga) September 4, 2024
The rumor also appeared (archived) in numerous (archived) other X posts (archived) in 2024, as well as on TikTok (archived) and Reddit (archived).
Located in Disney World's Magic Kingdom, the Hall of Presidents opened in 1971. It features a short stage show performed by animatronic versions of every U.S. president, up to and including the current one. When a new president is elected, the Hall typically shuts down for a period of time to allow Disney's Imagineers β the term the company uses for the employees involved in designing, building, and maintaining Disney's physical attractions β time to prepare a new presidential animatronic for the show.
According to the rumor, Disney's Imagineers were so confident in Clinton's 2016 victory that they began work on an animatronic based on her before the election. Allegedly, Trump's win left the Imagineers scrambling to remake the Clinton bot in Trump's likeness, resulting in an animatronic that appeared to be an uncanny hybrid of the two politicians.
The rumor began to circulate (archived) on social media shortly after Trump's animatronic made its first appearance in December 2017 β nearly a year after Trump's Jan. 20, 2017, inauguration. It quickly attracted media attention, with mentions in The Week and the Washington Post. In early 2018, comedian Ellen DeGeneres riffed on the theory, jokingly suggesting that Disney had repurposed an animatronic from Ellen's Energy Adventure, an attraction that ran at Disney's Epcot park until 2004.
In 2021, when the Hall of Presidents reopened following Joe Biden's inauguration as president, multiple Disney bloggers noted that the company appeared to have taken advantage of the attraction's closure to revamp the Trump animatronic's appearance. Side-by-side images (archived) did show a clear difference in the animatronic's appearance before and after the attraction reopened in 2021, although Disney has not confirmed that the company made any changes to it.
100% the original hall of presidents trump animatronic was supposed to be hillary. they even replaced it with an updated one later https://t.co/MSVG1InAKG pic.twitter.com/1jlF4YC89q
β π΄οΈBossπ»β¨ (@TMMBosstones) September 4, 2024
Some internet users have suggested Disney replaced all or part of the Trump bot, pointing (archived) to an animatronic head (archived) that was on display β without skin β at the Walt Disney Archives in 2023. According to a placard that accompanied it, the head was part of the Hall of Presidents attraction from 2016 until 2021. Disney has not confirmed that the head was part of the original Trump animatronic.
When we first looked into the rumor that Trump's animatronic was originally based on Clinton in 2021, we found no concrete evidence to support it. Two years later, however, in June 2023, a blogger named Alex Goldman published a Substack newsletter containing what he claimed was confirmation of the theory in the form of a statement from an anonymous Imagineer who worked at Disney around the time of the 2016 election.
According to Goldman, the alleged former Imagineer told him:
Everyone was positive that Hillary was going to win so much so that they created her animatronic, then they got caught with their pants down when Trump won. It can take months if not years to design a new animatronic. I remember seeing the facial designs for the Hillary animatronic at least six months before the election and an intern asked the 3D artist what would happen if Trump won, and he laughed and just said, "Then, we're screwed." β¦ My guess is that they probably originally tried to salvage the animatronic by keeping Hillary's skull and putting Trump's skin over top of it.
Goldman's report of the alleged former Imagineer's statement attracted media attention in 2023, some of it credulous. However, in his newsletter, Goldman himself included a disclaimer noting that he could not guarantee the individual was telling the truth about the animatronic β or even that the individual ever worked for Disney.
Additionally, although Goldman's source said they "remember seeing the facial designs" for a Clinton animatronic, they did not in fact claim in their statement to have concrete knowledge that Disney repurposed a Clinton animatronic for Trump. Instead, they used the words "guess" and "probably" to frame that part of the statement.
Goldman did not respond to a request for further information that might support the credibility of his source.
Snopes has also reached out to the Walt Disney Company for comment on the theory, and will update this story if and when we hear back.
Ultimately, in the absence of any definitive statement from either Disney or a verifiable employee with knowledge of the situation, there was no demonstrable evidence to either support or disprove the claim that the animatronic used to portray Trump in Disney's Hall of Presidents from 2017 to 2021 was originally designed to resemble Clinton. For that reason, we've rated the claim as unproven.
We've previously looked into other claims about Walt Disney World's Hall of Presidents, including a rumor that Disney was permanently closing the Hall of Presidents attraction after the 2024 presidential election.
Snopes' archives contributed to this report.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)