We’ve tried to scrub as much of the time period from our collective memories as possible, I know, but if you cast your mind back to the Presidency of Donald Trump, and 2017 specifically, you might remember one of the weirdest stories to emerge was one involving Disney, an animatronic robot and Hillary Clinton.
It was never confirmed, but as soon as Disney unveiled their bizarrely misshapen version of Trump for the Hall of Presidents, people looked at it and thought: hrm, that sure looks like they made a robot of Hillary Clinton, assuming she would win, then had to hurriedly change it to Trump after his surprise upset.
Then a bunch of other horrors and pandemics and constitutional crisis took place and we all forgot about it. Until this week, when podcaster Alex Goldman—after speaking with a former Disney employee who was there at the time, but asked to remain anonymous—published a report saying…that’s pretty much what happened.
The source (a former Disney “Imagineer”) says that, in an effort to keep the show open for as long as possible—it normally has to close for months while a new Presidential robot is built, and its lines recorded—Disney execs in 2016 hedged their bets and had a Hillary made ahead of time.
“I remember seeing the facial designs for the Hillary animatronic 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’re screwed’”.
While this employee says they knew about the decision to build Hillary early, which is interesting enough in its own right, they can’t confirm that the Trump animatronic we eventually saw was exactly the same robot. “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”, they conclude, which given the news about building Hillary in 2016 and his ultimately bizarro face now seems 99.99% likely, but as we learned from the 2016 polls, 99.99% is not 100%, so just keep that in mind.
(Note that after President Biden won the 2020 election, while the attraction was closed down building his animatronic, Trump’s was also salvaged to appear much more realistic).
Oh, and before you stop thinking about Disney animatronics for the day/month/year, you should definitely check out Goldman’s full blog for a bonus anecdote about “at least a dozen Ellen Degeneres animatronics”.