President-elect Donald Trump praised Isaac “Ike” Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, at an event Monday night at the Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Fla.
“The guy went from stone-cold broke to owning Disney,” Trump said of Perlmutter in front of his supporters at his private south Florida estate. “Then he got out of Disney because they went woke. He didn’t want woke Donald Duck, right?”
Disney laid Perlmutter off in 2023 after his division — which was separate from Marvel Studios — was absorbed into other units of the company due to cost-cutting measures. Earlier this year, the Marvel ex-chairman sold all of his Disney stock — about 25.6 million shares — for almost $3 billion, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. At the time, Perlmutter said he expects Disney’s stock to continue to drop — and that if the share price falls to $65-$75 per share, he plans to repurchase much of his previous stock holdings, per the Journal report.
Perlmutter, who took control of Marvel Entertainment in the 1990s, became a major shareholder in the Walt Disney Company when, in 2009, he sold Marvel Entertainment to the media conglomerate for more than $4 billion. As chairman of Marvel Entertainment, he famously fought Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige over making “Black Panther” and “Captain Marvel” on the belief that movies led by Black or female characters would not be commercially successful. However, Disney CEO Bob Iger intervened to overrule Perlmutter.
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Perlmutter was among the entertainment figures in attendance at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago event on Monday night. Another notable attendee included actor Sylvester Stallone, who, as seen in a video circulating online, stood near Trump while the president-elect spoke about Perlmutter.