Clinton’s showbiz pals spend big as Hollywood shuns Trump

LOS ANGELES—Glance at the list of Hillary Clinton’s biggest donors and you could be forgiven for thinking she was funding a Hollywood movie rather than a presidential campaign.

It is hardly surprising that the left-leaning entertainment industry is supporting a Democrat for the White House, but the gulf between candidates in donations from Tinseltown this election cycle is staggering.

Actors, studio executives and other employees of the film, TV and music industries have donated $20.7 million to Clinton’s run for the presidency, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks campaign funding.

Her Republican rival Donald Trump has meanwhile raised less than $350,000 from Hollywood.

“The Clintons have always been Hollywood darlings, going back to Bill’s term in office,” said Usman Shaikh, a Los Angeles-based entertainment attorney and a contemporary of Trump’s daughter Ivanka at the University of Pennsylvania.

“If you recall when it was Clinton and Obama for the primaries in 2008, Hollywood was supporting Clinton.”

Within hours of the former first lady confirming last year she was running to become America’s first female commander-in-chief, dozens of celebrities clamored to give their stamp of approval.

By the fall of 2015, according to the Los Angeles Times, she had taken about $5 million of the $5.5 million that Hollywood figures had donated to the 2016 campaign.

Film titans Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg gave $1 million each, while “Star Wars” director J.J. Abrams stumped up $500,000.

Clinton supporter George Clooney hosted back-to-back dinners in San Francisco and Los Angeles in April which reportedly raised over $15 million, with donors paying as much as $350,000 a head.

Clinton attended 17 starry fundraisers in California over the summer, part of an eye-watering schedule that included nine events spread across the state over just three days in late August.

Onslaught of negativity

That string of fundraisers included an August 22 cocktail reception for 500 people — including actor Samuel L. Jackson — hosted by NBA legend Magic Johnson and his wife Cookie.

That was followed later the same day by a 90-minute event put on by billionaire media mogul Haim Saban and his wife Cheryl at their Beverly Hills home. One hundred guests paid at least $50,000 each.

The following day involved fundraisers in Piedmont and Laguna Beach, each requiring donations of $33,400 from attendees, and a 75-minute swing by the Hollywood Hills home of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel.

Guests there — including Jennifer Aniston, Tobey Maguire, Shonda Rhimes, Jamie Foxx and Katie Holmes — raised more than $3 million.

Trump, meanwhile, has faced an unprecedented onslaught of negativity from the entertainment industry — and not just the liberals.

Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a statement on Twitter at the start of October saying he would not be voting Republican for the first time since gaining US citizenship in 1983.

Meanwhile Harry Sloan, former head of MGM and a lifelong Republican, has announced he is backing Clinton and has even donated to her campaign.

According to Shaikh, there are an abundance of conservatives in Hollywood — but hardly any who will support the Republican candidate because of his divisive rhetoric on Mexicans, Muslims and women.

In fact, the driving force behind Trump’s fundraising activities is veteran Hollywood producer Steve Mnuchin, the man behind the “X-Men” franchise and “Avatar,” who has been finance chair of the campaign since May.

Political consultant Patrick Dorinson led a contingent of entertainment figures including Oscar-winner Jon Voight on a bus tour across the US in mid-September, giving speeches and news conferences on behalf of Trump.

‘Just too extreme’

But the litany of celebrities who have openly disparaged the real estate mogul and former reality TV star by far outweighs his supporters in Hollywood.

Some of America’s biggest stars, including actors Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson, appeared in a video in September to take potshots at Trump while rallying voters to the polls on Election Day.


“Do we really want to give nuclear weapons to a man whose signature move is firing things?” asks Leslie Odom Jr., a Tony winner for his turn as Aaron Burr in the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton.”

“I just think culturally he’s a very different fit from Hollywood. On so many of his issues, he’s just too extreme, particularly on women’s issues,” said Steve Maviglio, a California-based political consultant.

“He’s been actually good on gay marriage and you’d think that would be a natural to attract people in Hollywood. But you’re not even seeing the Hollywood Republicans helping him out.

“Look at the Republican convention. He had hardly any entertainment, any Hollywood, there at all.  Where is Clint Eastwood, even?”

But while support of Hollywood is an important source of campaign fundraising, surveys have shown that the backing of celebrities holds little sway over the way Americans vote.

“We saw Susan Sarandon do a lot of work for Bernie Sanders this year,” said Maviglio, who served as Bill Clinton’s director of public affairs in the 1990s.

“She got a lot of attention because she was one of the first people out there. But did it have an impact at the end of the day? No.”

source: entertainment.inquirer.net

Trump moves from ‘crooked Hillary’ to ‘the devil’ on stump

MECHANICSBURG, Pennsylvania — On the campaign stump Donald Trump has opened August by moving from ‘crooked Hillary’ to ‘the devil.’

Speaking in Pennsylvania on Monday, the billionaire real estate mogul derided Bernie Sanders’ capitulation in the Democratic primary race and Sanders’ decision to support Clinton.

Trump said of Sanders: “He made a deal with the devil. She’s the devil.”

Trump in recent days has taken to categorizing the the Clinton-Sanders understanding as a “deal with the devil” but this was the first time that he went so far as to specifically equate Clinton with Lucifer.

Trump’s supporters packed a Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania high school gymnasium and thousands more were left outside or forced to watch in a spillover room.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Trump, Clinton sweep to victory in Northeastern contests

PHILADELPHIA — Donald Trump swept all five Republican primaries Tuesday, a commanding showing across the Northeast that kept the Republican front-runner on his narrow path to the GOP nomination. His rout was a blow to rivals who are running out of ways to stop the brash billionaire.

Hillary Clinton was dominant in Democratic contests in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania. She ceded Rhode Island to rival Bernie Sanders, and they were locked in a close race in Connecticut.

With her three victories, Clinton now has 88 percent of the delegates she needs to become the first woman nominated by a major party. She’s already increasingly looking past Sanders, even as the Vermont senator vows to stay in the race until primary voting ends in June.

“We will unify our party to win this election and build an America where we can all rise together,” Clinton declared during a victory rally in Philadelphia, the city where Democrats will gather for their national convention in July.

Sanders spent Tuesday campaigning in West Virginia, where he drew several thousand people to a lively evening rally. He urged his supporters to recognize that they are “powerful people if you choose to exercise that power.”

Still, there were some signs that Sanders’ campaign was coming to grips with his difficult position. Top aide Tad Devine said that after Tuesday’s results were known, “we’ll decide what we’re going to do going forward.”

Trump’s victories padded his delegate totals, yet the Republican contest remains chaotic. The businessman is the only candidate left in the three-person race who could possibly clinch the nomination through the regular voting process, yet he could still fall short of the 1,237 delegates he needs.

GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich are desperately trying to keep him from that magic number and push the race to a convention fight, where complicated rules would govern the nominating process. The Texas senator and Ohio governor even took the rare step of announcing plans to coordinate in upcoming contests to try to minimize Trump’s delegate totals.

But that effort did little to stop Trump from a big showing in the Northeast.

Cruz spent Tuesday in Indiana, which votes next week. Indiana is one of Cruz’s last best chances to slow Trump, and Kasich’s campaign is pulling out of the state to give him a better opportunity to do so.

“Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain,” Cruz said during an evening rally in Knightstown, Indiana. His event was held at the “Hoosier gym,” where some scenes were filmed for the 1986 movie, “Hoosiers,” starring Gene Hackman as the coach of a small town Indiana basketball team that wins the state championship.

Trump has railed against his rivals’ coordination, panning it as “pathetic,” and has also cast efforts to push the nomination fight to the convention as evidence of a rigged process that favors political insiders.

Yet there’s no doubt Trump is trying to lead a party deeply divided by his candidacy. In Pennsylvania, exit polls showed nearly 4 in 10 GOP voters said they would be excited by Trump becoming president, but the prospect of the real estate mogul in the White House scares a quarter of those who cast ballots in the state’s Republican primary.

In another potential general election warning sign for Republicans, 6 in 10 GOP voters in Pennsylvania said the Republican campaign has divided the party — a sharp contrast to the 7 in 10 Democratic voters in the state who said the race between Clinton and Sanders has energized their party.

The exit polls were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks.

With his five victories Tuesday, Trump will win at least 82 of the 118 delegates up for grabs in Tuesday’s contests. And he has a chance to win a lot more.

In Pennsylvania, Trump collected 17 delegates for winning the state. An additional 54 are elected directly by voters — three in each congressional district. However, their names are listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidate they support.

Those delegates will attend the GOP convention as free agents, able to vote for the candidate of their choice.

Democrats award delegates proportionally, which allowed Clinton to maintain her lead over Sanders even as he rattled off a string of wins in previous contests. According to the AP count, Clinton has 2,089 delegates while Sanders has 1,258.

That count includes delegates won in primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates — party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice, regardless of how their state votes.

Clinton’s campaign is eager for Sanders to tone down his attacks on the former secretary of state if he’s going to continue in the race. She’s been reminding voters of the 2008 Democratic primary, when she endorsed Barack Obama after a tough campaign and urged her supporters to rally around her former rival.

Ahead of Tuesday’s results, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid said that while Sanders has run a “unique and powerful” campaign, he does not believe the Vermont senator will be the party’s nominee.

According to exit polls, less than a fifth of Democratic voters said they would not support Clinton if she gets the nomination. The exit polls were conducted in Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Maryland.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Sanders wins Wyoming to extend victory run

NEW YORK, United States — White House hopeful Bernie Sanders extended his winning streak in his bid to pull off a shock and defeat Hillary Clinton, grabbing victory in the Wyoming Democratic caucuses Saturday, US media said.

The state — which is overwhelmingly Republican — awards only 14 delegates, meaning Sanders barely puts a dent in Clinton’s more than 200-delegate lead, but it gives the self-described democratic socialist another morale boost, ahead of the crucial New York primary on April 19.

The Vermont senator won 56 percent of the Wyoming vote to 44 percent for Clinton, CNN projected, with most ballots counted.

Clinton though remains the clear frontrunner for the Democratic party ticket for November’s general election, but Sanders has the momentum and has enjoyed a string of successes at the polls.

Speaking to supporters in New York, Sanders broke into his speech to say to cheers: “All right. News bulletin. We just won Wyoming.”

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Sanders wins in Kansas, Nebraska; Hillary takes Louisiana—TV

WASHINGTON, United States — Bernie Sanders defeated Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton in a caucus held Saturday in the heartland state of Kansas and Nebraska, giving a boost to his flagging campaign, US media reported.

The Vermont senator had lost significant momentum to the former US secretary of state following last week’s Super Tuesday vote, after which Clinton gained a sizeable lead in the count for delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

But he seemed to recover somewhat with the two key victories Saturday, ahead of another contest in Maine.

“It’s official: @BernieSanders takes Kansas,” read a tweet sent by Kansas Democratic party officials.

US broadcasters projected Hillary Clinton would be the victor in the night’s only Democratic primary, in the southern state of Louisiana.

Sanders lost no time crowing about the Kansas victory in a fundraising appeal in which he expressed delight over his “political revolution.”

“Tonight’s victory means the last three states called in this Democratic primary have been won by our political revolution,” Sanders wrote.

“And we’re optimistic that we’ll do well in the caucus already under way in Nebraska, and another in Maine tomorrow,” he wrote.

source: newsinfo.inquirer.net

Republican candidates Bush and Trump clash over 9/11 remarks

WASHINGTON - Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush transitioned from defense to offense on Sunday after criticism from rival Donald Trump that his brother, former President George W. Bush, carried some blame for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Trump, the flamboyant front-runner in the 15-candidate Republican field, once again provoked a tit-for-tat with Bush on Friday by saying his brother must share some of the blame for the attacks that occurred during his first year in office.

"Look, my brother responded to a crisis, and he did it as you would hope a president would do," Bush said on CNN's "State of the Union."

"The great majority of Americans believe that. And I don't know why he keeps bringing this up."

Bush said Trump's comments about the Sept. 11 attacks called his credibility into question. The former Florida governor attacked Trump's foreign policy credentials and compared his grip on international issues to a reality television show the billionaire businessman formerly hosted.

"Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things that -- as though he's still on 'The Apprentice,'" Bush said on CNN.

"Talking about Syria - saying ISIS should take out (Syrian President Bashar al-Assad), then Russia should take out ISIS, as though it was some kind of board game and not a serious approach," he said.

Trump doubled down on his comments during an appearance on "Fox News Sunday," using a oft-repeated Jeb Bush phrase - that his brother "kept us safe" - against him.

"Jeb said 'we were safe with my brother. We were safe.' Well the World Trade Center just fell down," Trump said on Fox.

"I'm not blaming George Bush, but I don't want Jeb Bush to say 'my brother kept us safe,' because September 11th was one of the worst days in the history of this country."

Bush has defended his brother's actions after the Sept. 11 attacks, but his campaign has kept its distance from the unpopular president indelibly linked to the unpopular Iraq war.

He mocked Trump's comments and likened them to blaming President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the World War Two attack on Pearl Harbor.

"Next week, Mr. Trump is probably going to say that FDR was around when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor," he said. "It's what you do after that matters. And that's the sign of leadership." — Reuters

Donald Trump is the only man to save the world, says Carl Icahn

The Wall Street veteran said the property mogul’s strong sense of self was a positive for high office because he wouldn’t be threatened by having smart people, such as Icahn, giving him advice.

“His ego permits him to — where a lot of these other presidents don’t — surround himself with really good people, not just me but others,” Icahn said in an interview with Reuters.

“He needs as many good people as he can get in this environment today. We certainly don’t see that in many of these presidents.”

Trump has said in interviews and speeches that if elected, he would love to name Icahn as Treasury Secretary.

The father of 2 said he’s flattered to be considered for the position but he does not get up early enough in the morning to accept the opportunity. Asked if he’d take on a top economic advisory role, Icahn said: “We never talked about that.”

Icahn made his fortune in the 1980s buying stakes in poorly-performing companies and battling management to turn them around. Currently he is making billion dollar bets on a rebound in energy and commodities.

Like Trump, who also grew up in the New York neighbourhood of Queens, Icahn revels in anti-corporate rhetoric.

In a video entitled “Danger Ahead” released on Tuesday, the 79-year old criticizes Wall Street and the Federal Reserve for what he says is a bubble in the corporate bond market and the super-rich for not paying enough taxes.

“Most of these rich guys — many of them — haven’t done very much,” Icahn said. “People on Wall Street, I know them, they are good friends of mine.”

“But not having to pay full taxes on money that you are earning is an absurdity,” he said, pointing to private equity and hedge fund managers who benefit from the so-called “carried interest” loophole under which their earnings are taxed as capital gains rather than ordinary wage income.

In one section of the video, which includes a clip from the mafia movie “Goodfellas,” Icahn attacks Wall Street for pushing riskier junk bonds on Americans.

“Wall Street does what Wall Street does best, it sells securities,” Icahn said. “I used to laugh with some of these guys who sell these bonds. I used to say, ‘You know, the Mafia has a better code of ethics than you guys.’ You know you keep selling this crap, and you keep selling it.”

‘THE COUNTRY IS BURNING’

Icahn also criticized U.S. companies for parking profits abroad through takeovers and complicated tax structures.

“If we don’t really allow these companies to bring the money back that they are making there (overseas), they are just going to move out of this country,” Icahn said by phone.

“It’s gonna happen more quickly than they think. While Congress is sort of fiddling around, this thing is being done. The country is burning and they’re fiddling.”

Icahn’s video came out a day after Trump, currently the Republican presidential front-runner, unveiled sweeping proposals to simplify the tax code, slash the corporate tax rate and impose a one-time levy on the overseas earnings of U.S. companies.

Trump’s plan on taxing overseas profits resembles proposals put forward by President Barack Obama and two senior senators, Democrat Chuck Schumer of New York and Republican Rob Portman of Ohio.

But Icahn said Trump was the only candidate for the 2016 presidential race who really understands the problems.

“I think he definitely wants to prove that he can turn America around,” said Icahn. “I want to see a businessman who understands we have massive problems.”  — Reuters