My journalism goes to Disney World
A 2015 Politico scoop about loving America finds its way into Obama's Selma speech — and then the Hall of Presidents
I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and this is love, journalism.
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This is one of those journalism stories that feels like magic. Spoilers: it wasn’t. But it does involve Disney World.
Cut to December 2025. My wife and I are on a Florida vacation, and Disney World is a must. I hadn’t been to Orlando in 32 years since my high school senior year, back when the Sunshine State had a weird tradition of letting graduating seniors roam the Magic Kingdom overnight. Now, as childless Gen X politics and policy nerds, we were genuinely pumped for the Hall of Presidents. Bonus: there was no line.
Inside the dark, air-conditioned theater, I felt a wave of patriotism watching the historical film before the curtains rose on the animatronic, Chuck E. Cheese-style presidential robots. But my patriotism turned into professional pride when I heard one specific line - a quote I had a direct hand in making happen.
If you aren’t paying close attention, you might miss it. Right before the robot roll call, a montage of recent presidents’ voices echoes through the theater with their most famous soundbites. You hear JFK’s “ask not,” Reagan’s “tear down this wall,” and George W. Bush’s post-9/11 bullhorn speech.
Last is Barack Obama, whose entire eight-year term boiled down to this:
“Loving this country requires more than singing its praises or avoiding uncomfortable truths. It requires the occasional disruption, the willingness to speak out for what is right, to shake up the status quo. That’s America.”
The nation’s first Black president didn’t just pull those words out of thin air when he delivered his historic Selma speech marking 50 years since Bloody Sunday. And that is where I come in.
Let’s rewind to February 2015 on a brisk Ash Wednesday in New York City. I was on assignment for Politico Magazine, writing a profile on conservative economist Stephen Moore. My editors wanted a piece on the policy wonks trying to land jobs with the emerging 2016 GOP presidential candidates.
That night, I tagged along with Moore to an exclusive dinner at the 21 Club that he was co-hosting. About 60 right-leaning executives and conservative media types packed the room to hear from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker - then a GOP frontrunner. But the night took a wildly dramatic turn thanks to a late-minute addition: Rudy Giuliani.
Without warning, the former New York mayor crashed the private second-floor room and took the mic. My tape recorder was running as he meandered through topics before taking a sharp turn into Obama’s patriotism.
“I do not believe, and I know this is a horrible thing to say, but I do not believe that the president loves America,” Giuliani said. “He doesn’t love you. And he doesn’t love me. He wasn’t brought up the way you were brought up and I was brought up through love of this country.”
Remember, this was early 2015. Donald Trump hadn’t even ridden his golden escalator yet. Outright questioning a sitting president’s love for his country was a massive story. My 593-word scoop went viral overnight. By morning, Giuliani was defending himself on Fox News, and literally everyone in politics was weighing in. Saturday Night Live even used it for their Cold Open.
I thought that was the end of it.
Fast forward to 2023. An Obama spokesperson told me I needed to read Grace, a memoir by former White House speechwriter Cody Keenan. In it, I finally learned what happened behind the scenes six weeks after my scoop dropped.
Keenan was struggling to find the right emotional anchor for Obama’s upcoming speech at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. When a late-winter snowstorm shut down D.C., Keenan found himself trapped in the White House with rare, unfettered access to the president.
In a 2023 interview on The love, journalism Show, Keenan explained his secret weapon for inspiring the boss: “I always found that a good way to kind of shake loose some emotion from him is to get him all hopped up on, you know, whatever the political idiocy of the day was.”
According to the book, Obama initially brushed it off: “Who gives a fuck what Rudy Giuliani has to say?” But then, the bait clicked. “But it does offer an idea worth taking on,” Obama added.
Which brings us right back to Disney World.
Obama’s Selma speech lasted over 30 minutes, and he later called it one of the most important addresses of his presidency. It’s so big, in fact, that the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago that opens on Friday has other pieces of that massive Selma speech engraved in stone on the building’s facade overlooking the Windy City and Lake Michigan.
Back in central Florida, out of all the words Obama spoke in Selma, Disney’s curators chose the exact line he wrote to rebuke Rudy Giuliani and the conservative media machine. It’s been playing on loop in the attraction through Trump 1.0, Joe Biden, and now Trump 2.0. A long-forgotten news cycle lives on.
I just love stories like this. It’s so DC. I’m also a big hall of presidents fan and my family usually only tolerates it because it’s an opportunity to sit down in the air conditioning for a bit.