Hollywood heavyweight support for Liz Cheney adds to her war chest

(AP Photo/Alastair Grant)

Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and his wife Marilyn are getting in early to donate money to a potential Liz Cheney presidential bid in 2024. Liz Cheney lost the Republican primary in Wyoming on Tuesday night in a humiliating defeat. Now Cheney makes it clear that her mission is to run interference for Trump’s expected 2024 campaign. She will start out with plenty of money in the bank, whatever she decides to do.

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The question is how will Liz Cheney decide to go about keeping Trump out of the White House? Will she decide to run for president herself? In a post-election interview on the Today Show, host Savannah Guthrie was almost giddy as she asked if Cheney will run for president in 2024. Liz was coy in not directly answering that question but it is clear she is thinking about it. Will she run as a Republican? Yes, I think she will if she jumps into the race. She has been clear all along that she does not intend to change her political affiliation to Independent, she said she is a Republican. Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Her political career is over. She may have driven the final nail in the coffin of the old GOP. The GOP of the Bush and Cheney era is gone.

Democrats are delighted with Liz Cheney, as are the media and some Hollywood heavy hitters. They stepped up and donated to her campaign, though it was doomed once she completely threw in with Democrats in Congress and became Nancy Pelosi’s useful idiot on the January 6 commission. She became the face of the anti-Trump Republicans, along with Adam Kinzinger. Republican voters could have accepted her disgust with the Capitol Hill riot on January 6 but they cannot accept Liz’s new alliance with the left. Enter Hollywood moguls with plenty of money and influence to help her out. They will not support her bid for president when the time comes, if it does, because they will support whomever the Democrats nominate, but in the meantime Liz is building quite a large war chest. They will help her in a primary against Donald Trump, though.

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With Cheney stating Wednesday that she was considering a run for the presidency, the Katzenbergs’ backing will go a long way to guaranteeing more Hollywood donors will follow — despite the fact that the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney is a pro-gun, anti-abortion conservative who voted with Donald Trump 93% of the time while he was in the White House. Cheney, of course, has become an arch-enemy of Trump since voting to impeach the former president following the Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021 and now leading the committee to investigate the event.

Overall, Cheney has received tremendous support in California, with more than 1,400 state residents donating nearly $1.4 million to her re-election bid, according to FEC records. In addition to the Katzenbergs, Cheney’s campaign received donations from entertainment attorney Bruce Ramer; Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos’ wife and producer, Nicole Avant; “Hunger Games” and “Ocean’s 8” director Gary Ross; “Friends” co-creator and producer Kevin Bright and philanthropist Edyth Broad.

Tech moguls Ron Conway, Sean Parker and Reid Hoffman also kicked in cash. Gene Autry’s widow, Jackie Autry, contributed nearly $19,000 to Cheney’s campaign and supporting PACs, while the family’s Autry Community Property Trust donated $100,000 to pro-Cheney PAC Wyomingites Defending Freedom.

The Katzenbergs’ support goes back to 2021. They donated $21,600 to The Great Task PAC last August. That PAC was consolidated with Cheney’s campaign committee on election night. Her war chest, according to FEC records, has grown to $8M. The Katzenbergs also gave $10,000 to the Cowboy PAC in 2021, a leadership PAC formed to support Cheney. They gave $11,600 to Cheney’s reelection campaign – the max of $5,800 each.

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Cheney launched The Great Task, an organization with the goal of keeping Trump from going back to the White House. The name is taken from a phrase in the Gettysburg Address. Cheney referred to Abraham Lincoln as she called for the Republican Party to go back to its roots. Ironically, for all of Cheney’s allegiance with Lincoln, her goal is different than his was during his time in office. He was working to unite the country during a civil war. Cheney wants to create a civil war among Republicans in hopes that the fallout will be to her liking. The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed that points out that a large portion of Republicans found the events of January 6 repulsive yet they cannot accept a Republican throwing in with Democrats solely for their own agenda.

Liz Cheney lost her Republican primary in Wyoming Tuesday because she bravely stood up to the stolen-election falsehoods of Donald Trump. Liz Cheney lost the primary because she alienated too many Republicans by making common cause with Democrats like Rep. Adam Schiff.

Both statements can be true, and in our view both explain why Ms. Cheney lost decisively in a conservative state that had elected her three times and sent her father to Congress more times than that.

I agree. Cheney decided to be a martyr and that was her downfall. She and Trump are both guilty of dwelling on January 6 and the 2020 election. Voters look forward. Frankly, most people are exhausted with the constant outrage. We need a happy warrior, like Reagan, who can articulate the desire to get back to the policies of the Trump administration that were so successful. Liz Cheney voted with Trump about 93% of the time.

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Liz Cheney no longer has a constituency. Her own voters in Wyoming who re-elected her since 2017 no longer trust her. The anti-Trump Republicans can unite with Republicans who think it is time for a younger, fresh candidate and will have another candidate to back, likely Ron DeSantis. The Democrats who are thrilled with Liz Cheney today will be bored with her by 2024 and will certainly not support a Republican for president. It’s time for Liz to finish her term in Congress and move on to her next phase in life.

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 22, 2024
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