Valuetainment - September 30, 2026


＂You Signed My Death Warrant＂ – Ex Disney CEO on The Phone Call That Changed Everything

Hosted by
Patrick Bet-David
Mentioned
Susan Josh Michael Eisner Ben Smith Founder
Elon Reveals Tesla’s NEW Semi Trucks Disrupting The Industry Disney Almost Promoted a CONSERVATIVE CEO - UNTOLD STORY

Episode Stats


Length

8 minutes

Words per minute

179.42

Word count

1,569

Sentence count

90

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Toxicity

4

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 You were set up to go up there, to take the heat, to say, oh, my God, we need I grew back.
00:00:04.540 Sometimes CEOs don't want to give up the throne and they want to be missed.
00:00:08.000 And there is an internal battle between not a founder, but a CEO.
00:00:12.480 Founder wants the business to grow forever.
00:00:14.140 CEO is kind of like, man, you know, I want the next guy to transition, to do better than me.
00:00:18.800 But, man, I also don't want them to forget about me because I've been so important for 38 years.
00:00:22.780 Right of a lifetime.
00:00:23.460 I've read Right of a Lifetime multiple times as well.
00:00:25.440 It's a phenomenal book on what he did.
00:00:26.780 It's a great story of all the deals that he did.
00:00:29.260 But then set him up, leave, and this time around that he wants to leave,
00:00:34.640 he truly wants to leave, and he learned from the mistake on the way he did it
00:00:37.920 to set him up in a different way.
00:00:39.520 How do you process it?
00:00:41.960 I think it's a different time in his life.
00:00:45.620 I think he got a taste of retirement or, frankly, a.k.a. less relevance,
00:00:53.780 and I don't think he liked it.
00:00:55.740 And I think he immediately knew during that interview that he didn't like being the color commentary guy.
00:01:03.040 He wanted to be the play-by-play guy.
00:01:04.820 I think after three more years of it, and frankly, a rough three years,
00:01:09.040 because stock prices, when he left, pretty much where it was when he got it.
00:01:14.140 So three years and no growth while the rest of the market's exploding.
00:01:17.200 He realized, oh, you know, this post-COVID world is really kind of tough.
00:01:21.460 And so I think he was a lot more willing to smile at Josh and give Josh the reins and support Josh.
00:01:27.640 And by the way, after doing it to me, he couldn't do it twice for sure.
00:01:31.140 So I think he was a lot more ready, and I think you can look at it in his face.
00:01:35.980 By the way, that happened on the first day of the job, so it wasn't like I did anything to earn that.
00:01:40.540 It just was the situation that I walked into.
00:01:43.900 And, you know, that was the first of many. 0.95
00:01:47.060 He looked miserable. 0.98
00:01:48.200 He looked miserable. 1.00
00:01:48.980 He looked miserable sitting next to you. 0.97
00:01:50.540 And I knew that I was going to have a rough time, and then it just started piling on.
00:01:54.160 But the one that really took it over the top was the one that really, when I knew I really had a problem,
00:02:06.120 was when he did the New York Times article with Ben Smith via email, and he reasserted himself back as CEO.
00:02:13.880 That was the weirdest article.
00:02:15.980 By the way, I had no idea it was coming.
00:02:18.180 He didn't tell me.
00:02:19.360 His publicist didn't tell me.
00:02:21.320 And it's my understanding that the board didn't even know that he did that.
00:02:24.320 Susan didn't know?
00:02:25.540 My understanding.
00:02:26.460 Wouldn't Susan need to prove that if you're the executive chairman?
00:02:29.220 Yeah, but Bob did this thing that I called management by pronouncement,
00:02:32.680 where just like the Apple iTunes.
00:02:37.740 You don't want to debate it.
00:02:38.920 You just make the announcement.
00:02:40.100 Everybody says, oh, gosh, it's already announced.
00:02:41.720 it was a very classic tool that he used and so I'm at home and I someone calls me and says
00:02:48.280 you lost your job already like this is a month after I after I got it and COVID's and I'm just
00:02:53.980 like and I'm like what are you talking about because Iger just reasserted himself as the CEO
00:02:59.500 in a in an interview with uh New York Times I'm like what are you talking about is this pre-Susan's
00:03:07.380 meeting with you no no no this is after i got the job but only like a month after i got the job got
00:03:13.320 it and i'm like what are you talking about so now i've got a real tangible idea that he wants his
00:03:20.180 that he wants his job back it's not the next day we had conversation what was that call like
00:03:25.100 not good from i have you know i'm very much a uh almost like a military kind of guy where yes sir
00:03:32.740 i'll take the hill and i never push back i just say yes and i'll figure out a way to get it done
00:03:38.420 this was a little uncharacteristic and i think i caught him by off guard because i said you just
00:03:43.200 signed my death warrant you just literally signed my yeah i told him you signed my execution papers
00:03:49.120 because how do i recover from this you just go and reassert that you're you're coming back and i said
00:03:55.280 you signed my death warrant and from then on it was a death by a thousand cuts because it continued
00:04:01.500 these types of things continued and you know i don't know who else gets a job after after a day
00:04:09.580 after a month and you know his predecessor asserts to the new york times in an email interview so
00:04:18.980 there was no misquoting that um i i because of the circumstances i need to come back i mean
00:04:25.400 it was my epitaph. That was it. And I say in the book that it's not a miracle that I lost my job.
00:04:32.460 It's a miracle that it took three years and I got an extension right before it happened.
00:04:37.740 Okay. When I sell my business, I want the best tax and investment advice. I want to help my kids
00:04:43.140 and I want to give back to the community. Ooh. Then it's the vacation of a lifetime.
00:04:49.860 I wonder if my head of office has a forever setting.
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00:05:09.400 Did you call Susan?
00:05:10.880 Because one call is to him, but did you call Susan?
00:05:12.820 No, no, of course I did.
00:05:13.740 And Susan's giving you reassurance that,
00:05:15.460 don't worry, Bob, we're sticking with you.
00:05:17.060 Oh, don't worry about it.
00:05:17.120 He's only going to be here for a couple more years.
00:05:18.960 Don't worry about it, Bob.
00:05:20.160 That's just Bob.
00:05:22.540 You know, and I'm like.
00:05:25.220 Are they best friends?
00:05:27.360 No.
00:05:28.480 Or they're not?
00:05:29.660 I would not characterize them as best friends.
00:05:33.520 So then the edge goes to you.
00:05:35.700 So doesn't she have to vote to bring him back?
00:05:38.520 Because the board voted to bring him back.
00:05:40.700 Oh, eventually.
00:05:42.280 Two and a half years later.
00:05:43.480 But why would she do that if they're not good friends?
00:05:47.600 It's more complicated than that. 1.00
00:05:48.920 There's more board members than Susan.
00:05:51.380 There are other people that are highly influential on the board.
00:05:54.920 So if it was Susan, he wouldn't be back?
00:05:57.480 I can't say yes or no.
00:05:59.960 Your body language tells me if I'm a poker player,
00:06:02.860 I read it as there's no way she would be voting for him to be back.
00:06:06.720 You can come to whatever conclusion you want.
00:06:09.040 All I know is that Bob had a lot of support from loyalists on the board,
00:06:13.880 and he always believed.
00:06:14.980 Right, the four from Michael Eisner?
00:06:17.080 I'm sorry?
00:06:17.540 The four board members that he replaced from Eisner?
00:06:19.760 Well, yeah, and all of them at that point.
00:06:22.400 Well, but in some, yes, but yes, some in particular.
00:06:25.520 I think Bob was always very, very confident that he can have his job back whenever he wanted.
00:06:32.040 Very confident.
00:06:33.140 So if we speculate, it would be, one, he set you up.
00:06:37.340 Two, he missed the limelight and just wanted to be back.
00:06:41.280 Or three, you know, just a very honest, you know, the business was not doing good
00:06:47.900 and this wasn't a good choice for you to be the CEO,
00:06:50.820 which one of those three do you lean towards?
00:06:53.820 He regretted his decision immediately upon making it,
00:06:58.060 and you saw it for some time from the time period where he said,
00:07:04.700 I'm leaving, to the time period that that first press interview came.
00:07:08.500 You can tell he already regretted it.
00:07:10.780 And whatever attempts he made to go through whatever process he might have,
00:07:17.360 maybe none to reassert himself as ceo he just decided to do it by pronouncement with the new
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