It’s not just the tech bros – Hollywood is grovelling for Trump too
There is a new cultural zeitgeist in town and it has left actors, singers and film execs reeling. Stephen Armstrong reports on the vibe shift to the right and how Trump is getting his own back on a town that bet against him
It’s hard being a liberal in Hollywood right now. They’re disorientated and confused. Richard Rushfield, editor of insider newsletter The Ankler, wrote a despairing screed the day after Trump’s inauguration: “We are not part of the ruling coalition here. We do not speak from a place of dictating to America how things are going to be or demanding they follow our lead – or else. In particular, no one is looking to hear more from Hollywood.”
As if to prove his point, last week Selena Gomez posted an Instagram story where she wept about the plight of immigrants under Trump. The backlash was so intense that she deleted it, adding, “Apparently it’s not OK to show empathy.”
This was the election that Hollywood thought it could win with its vibes-based Brat summer. Kamala Harris was heavily boosted by star power from George Clooney and Bruce Springsteen to Oprah Winfrey and Billie Eilish. all the way through to Barbra Streisand… the roll call is long and includes Michael Keaton, Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Eva Longoria, Jennifer Aniston and Cardi B. Even California’s Republican former governor Arnold Schwarzenegger voted Harris/Walz. But it turns out popular right-wing podcasters Joe Rogan and Theo Von hold more cultural sway than Taylor Swift and Beyonce.
LA is a febrile place right now. Even the fires have failed to unite the fractured community. It has just come through its #MeToo era when it put some previously untouchable predatory men in jail. Then came the cash freeze of the pandemic and the 2021 Golden Globes boycott, where stars and publicists refused to show up because none of the voters were black.
In 2023, two tough strikes saw writers and actors join forces on union picket lines, giving the mutinous workforce a sense of unity. David Zaslav, the boss of Warner Bros and a pro-Trump millionaire, became public enemy number one.
It’s a progressive town but the audience is shifting and starting to question its progressive ideals. Fan reaction to The Last Jedi, The Rise of Skywalker, Eternals and The Marvels was a howl of fanboy fury about “forced diversity”. Left-leaning documentary company Participant Media – which made An Inconvenient Truth – ran out of money and closed last year while Am I Racist? was 2024’s highest-grossing documentary – chiming with a new cultural zeitgeist which Trump is now fully encapsulating.
New York Magazine’s cover story last week, headlined “The Cruel Kids’ Table”, saw journalist Brock Colyar crashing the Trump inauguration parties and finding “Conservatism – as a cultural force, not just a political condition – back in a real way for the first time since the 1980s”. The enthusiastic new breed of triumphant Trumpists are young, well-connected, urban, and online crypto nerds and influencers – gay and straight – scorning identity politics and telling racist jokes, delighting in the freedom to say “f*****t” and “r******d”.
“More people think the Democrats are too liberal than say Republicans are too right wing,” a screenwriter explained when I asked him about this new vibe shift. “There’s no point in hating Trump voters. That’s the audience right now.”
The Academy Awards should be fun, but many people point to “liberal pearl-clutching speeches” of the recent events being a buzzkill and the viewing figures have been dwindling at an alarming rate. The Best Actor Oscars shortlist is looking punchy. Mikey Madison retains an air of mystery, but Timothee Chalamet, Cynthia Erivo, Ralph Fiennes, Fernanda Torres, Adrien Brody, Colman Domingo and Demi Moore are on the liberal wing of a liberal town. As for Sebastian Stan – well, in The Apprentice he plays Trump dealing with erectile dysfunction, receiving liposuction, and raping his wife, Ivana.
Academy voters are still deciding. If they want to go to war with the new administration, they might back Stan and hope for a fire and brimstone speech. If they follow the bookies, they’ll plump for Brody who may have had his voice tweaked by AI but keeps that voice from uttering his political opinions. Who will speak? What will they say? Or will everyone keep their heads down separating their art from their politics?
Meanwhile, taking a leaf out of the tech bros song sheet, celebrity allegiances are shifting like an agent’s smile. Snoop played the 2024 Oscars, but he also played a Trump inauguration party with Soulja Boy and Nelly. Snoop’s Instagram followers plummeted but he’s unapologetic and shrugging it off… despite lashing out at Kanye West for supporting Trump in 2018. Sniffing the wind change, Kim Kardashian is playing both sides, hanging with Kamala in 2024 and Melania in 2025. “Is Kim Kardashian just a Republican now?” The Cut asked this week after Elon Musk gave her a Tesla robot.
One agent pointed out to me the post-7 October protest caused problems that some once liberal Hollywood’s Jews felt conflicted by. “It’s hard to call Republicans loathsome racists when they have been far more consistently supportive of Jews facing this global wave of antisemitism.”
Hollywood is an adaptable place. It has to be because, ultimately, Hollywood is about business. You don’t get to be the only unsubsidised movie industry in the world if you can’t read the room. In the 1980s – when conservatism was a cultural force by New York magazine’s reckoning – Sly Stallone punched out commie Dolph Lundgren, Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and Jennifer Grey fought commie invaders in Red Dawn, Tom Cruise outfoxed commie pilots in Top Gun… well, you get the picture.
Meanwhile Michael J Fox chased the almighty dollar in The Secret of My Success, Michael Douglas proclaimed “greed is good” in Wall Street, Ackroyd and Murphy cleaned up in Trading Places, Paul Newman and Tom Cruise hustled in The Color of Money… and earnest screenwriters asking what happened to all those left-wing conspiracy movies of the 1970s like All the President’s Men, Chinatown and Network were told, forget it kid, no one wants that stuff anymore.
Hence Disney pulling a trans storyline from Pixar’s Win or Lose and pushing back on Rachel Zegler’s anti-Trump comments on Instagram. Zegler’s heading up the Mouse’s live-action remake of Snow White and the backlash was huge.
As former Fox News commentator Megyn Kelly said – “Hello, Disney? You’re going to have to redo your film again because this woman is a pig and you fired Gina Carano for far less.” (Carano is The Mandalorian star dropped in 2021 for posting on social media that being a Republican these days was like being Jewish during the Holocaust.) Zegler’s apology was fast and fulsome.
And then there’s the power shift. Whereas once being unwelcome in Hollywood would have bothered him, Trump is betting on tech being the new players in town. Silicon Valley gobbled up the music industry, the high street and your dating life and they’re coming for Tinseltown. Netflix, Amazon and Apple are moving and shaking up the old TV networks and movie studios and now making programmes and films just like Hollywood does.
The son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, one of Trump’s favourite billionaires, has snapped up Paramount. And while Musk and Zuckerberg don’t have studios, they have consumer attention and pull the levers of social media which are today’s entertainers of American adults.
So the backtracking has started. Disney, which found itself in the forefront of the culture wars over Florida governor Ron DeSantis “don’t say gay” policy in 2023, began its retreat in early 2024 after CEO Bob Iger said he didn’t like the term “woke” and the company’s purpose is “to entertain”.
The thing about Hollywood is it works on a strange equation. No one gets to run a studio unless they’re tooth and claw about money. A studio is a bank. They finance what sells. But for some reason, it’s liberals who make the best stories and liberals always need the cash. As leftie George Bernard Shaw said to rapacious mogul Sam Goldwyn: “There is this difference between you and me: You are only interested in art and I am only interested in money.”
When antisemite Walt Disney was making the profoundly racist Song of the South, he realised the movie went too far, so he called in Maurice Rapf. Rapf was a communist Jew and he figured Walt had made a mistake. Not at all, Disney told him. “That’s exactly why I want you to work on it. Because I know that you don’t think I should make the movie.”
So Rapf took the gig. Walt made the movie. They made a ton of cash. Then the audience's mood changed and now it’s hard to find a copy of the thing. That will always be the way. When the winds change, when the audience demands a different take, somehow Hollywood abides. And this is Trump’s world. For now.
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