Jeffrey Katzenberg Agewashed Biden. Hollywood is Fuming
He wanted to be a 'kingmaker' since he was 14. And now, says James Carville, he's been caught 'pissing up a rope'
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At 8 p.m. tonight, ABC News will air the first interview with President Joe Biden since his catastrophic debate performance on June 27 that shocked the world. His incoherence and decrepit appearance, including a seeming inability to look into the right camera and keep his mouth from hanging slack, led not only Democrats but the more than 51 million Americans who watched live to consider not only whether the President was up for this campaign but also who’s running the country day to day.
Biden’s performance hit especially hard in Hollywood, given the industry’s understanding of stagecraft and marketing, yes, but also the town’s long history as a Democratic stronghold and fundraising base.
While the rest of the country apportioned blame liberally on First Lady Jill Biden (the “Lady MacBiden” moniker surfacing on social media), the President’s sister Valerie, his closest aides, and former chief of staff Ron Klain, who prepped Biden for the debate, one name was on everyone’s lips in L.A. but nowhere to be found in headlines (until Wednesday with a devastating Financial Times piece about his role): Campaign co-chair Jeffrey Katzenberg. And for once, the man who’s rarely met a microphone he didn’t like has had nothing to say.
(When reached for comment for this piece, Katzenberg referred me to White House assistant press secretary Kevin Munoz, who did not respond.)
As New York noted back in January, Katzenberg had taken a “starring role” in the Biden re-election campaign as a national campaign co-chair — the only one of seven who had never held public office (quick: how many other of the co-chairs were profiled in the New York Times as “Biden’s Secret Weapon” in the weeks before the debate? Exactly).
Note the opening of the New York Times story:
When President Biden made clear last year that he was planning to run for another term, some important Democratic contributors expressed doubt. He was too old, they feared. He was not up to another four years.
It fell to Jeffrey Katzenberg to tell them they were wrong. When some still did not believe him, Mr. Katzenberg challenged them to come to Washington and find out for themselves — then arranged to bring the dubious donors to the White House to sit down with the octogenarian president to convince them he was still sharp enough.
Political strategist James Carville, when asked by The Ankler if he thought Katzenberg actually believed what he was telling people about Biden’s age, responded, “In Louisiana, it’s called ‘pissing up a rope.’ Never works.” (Carville has stated all along that the Democrats should’ve put forth another candidate.)
Indeed, Katzenberg, 73, repeatedly has called Biden’s age his “superpower.” A year ago, amid growing concerns about the President’s advanced years, the Wall Street Journal reported that Katzenberg was advising Biden to lean into his age like fellow octogenarians Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger — even as Biden steadfastly refused to do one-on-one interviews, tripped on Air Force One stairs, stumbled through prepared speeches, switched to wide-soled sneakers and had aides surround him every time he walked in public (the so-called “Operation Bubble Wrap”).
George Clooney attested to Katzenberg’s “narrative” skills around the age issue in the story:
Clooney said Democrats frequently struggle to sell their agenda, and the re-election campaign would be wise to listen to Katzenberg’s ideas on how to spread their message, including on the issue of Biden’s age, which the actor said he had discussed with Katzenberg.
“I always just say, look, everybody keeps coming into Hollywood for cash, and they don’t come to us for the one thing we do better than anybody, which is tell stories,” Clooney said. “And so I think it’s probably a very good idea that they’re going to Jeffrey not just for raising money, but for narratives. And I think that’s a very good thing.”
When I ask IAC chairman Barry Diller, via email, if he and his wife, designer Diane von Fürstenberg, are holding firm with the Biden campaign, he simply replied, “No.” (Diller maxed out with a $6,600 contribution to the Biden campaign in 2023, and gave $100,000 to the president and the Democratic Party’s joint super PAC for the general election.)
When Diller is also asked what role fundraisers like Katzenberg, once his assistant at Paramount, may have had in concealing the true state of Biden, it’s hard not to read into his nuance. He said: “Fundraisers are pure cheerleaders for the candidates — they can’t be expected to have a political role.”
Political Role, Oval Office Visits
That Katzenberg hadn’t witnessed signs of Biden’s diminished capacity is hard to imagine. The New York Times reported that Biden speaks with Katzenberg multiple times a week, and that he was at Camp David with the President as he prepared for State of the Union. A source also tells The Ankler he sends WhatsApp messages to Biden staffers nearly every day. Additionally, he was a fixture with Biden’s team during White House Correspondents Dinner weekend in April, where reporter Olivia Nuzzi wrote that the President looked so ghastly and vacant that “the group of reporters — not instigated by me, I should note — made guesses about how dead he appeared to be, percentage wise. ‘Forty percent?’ one of them asked.”
Katzenberg’s political consigliere, Andy Spahn, told New York in January, “[Jeffrey] is playing a significant leadership role on media, message and money.”
The Washington Post reported in January that Katzenberg was bringing people to the White House to meet the President (lunches, presumably between the hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.) in “an effort to reassure them about his reelection campaign, including concerns about his age and energy, according to three people familiar with the meetings.” Axios later reported that the White House counsel advised Biden to stop the meetings.
Still, Katzenberg, with little hands-on campaign experience, seemed less interested in the president’s deeper challenges, including stubbornly low approval ratings and a lack of enthusiasm among both young and working-class voters. When he turned heads by turning up at the GOP’s Iowa caucus for a press conference, he snapped at a local TV reporter when asked about his presence there.
New York reported on the exchange that began with a question from KNBC-TV’s Conan Nolan:
“Considering the fact that the Republican Party — one of the major talking points is that your party has abandoned the working class and it is a party made up of coastal elites — are you at all concerned that your presence here or your exalted position in the campaign sort of underscores that?”
Katzenberg was having none of it. How dare this local TV news reporter suggest he was out of touch? . . .
Frowning, he spoke into the mic.
“Not. At. All.”
Silence. A very-rich-guy-who-doesn’t-like-being-questioned level of silence. He wasn’t kidding.
“Jeff,” stammered the reporter, “seriously —”
“No, seriously,” said Katzenberg. “Not at all. I don’t accept your premise. Sorry.” He didn’t look terribly sorry.
To his credit, Katzenberg has been a ferocious fundraiser (whatever Biden’s age, there is no campaign without cash). As recently as a few weeks ago, a record-setting shindig featuring Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and Barbra Streisand raised more than $30 million. (Though it was noted the event was absent of anyone under 50.)
Donor Anger
Much of Hollywood’s anger today stems from their time spent supporting a candidate until the possible point of no return; any switch in candidate is complicated, and comes with enormous risk. Post-debate, Biden now trails Donald Trump nationally by six points, but more critically in the most recent state polls, Biden is slipping in both key states such as Pennsylvania and once-safe ones such as New Hampshire.
“Everyone in town is furious with him. Furious,” says one top Hollywood bundler of Katzenberg. As examples of Biden’s decline trickled out over the last year and a half, Katzenberg assured anyone who was concerned that Biden was “fine.”
Across Hollywood, in group chats, at lunches and now increasingly in public, Katzenberg is being accused of misleading donors, putting his own self-interest (and post-Quibi rebound) before the hard truth.
Biden’s war chest of $240 million would be almost impossible to match for a new candidate, and many donors likely already are tapped out. (As a change in the top of the ticket would be an unprecedented event, federal election law is not perfectly clear on what would happen to those funds. But Vice President Kamala Harris would likely control the cash if she were to become the presidential nominee, or Biden could transfer the money to the DNC, but not another candidate as that would likely violate campaign contribution limits.)
Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings has called on Biden to step aside, and writer and showrunner Damon Lindelof published an op-ed urging Democratic contributors to seal their wallets until Biden is replaced.
I emailed Lindelof about Katzenberg, and he is, for one, more forgiving. “We’ve had limited interaction with [Katzenberg] and didn’t need our arms twisted to contribute to the Biden campaign . . . we’re dutiful soldiers in that sense,” he told me. “For what it’s worth, I don’t personally feel like any deception occurred re: The President . . . we were all in a collective denial and I take full responsibility for that.”
Although Katzenberg has not been visible post-debate in defending the President, it’s hard not to imagine that a WSJ story from July 4 didn’t have Katzenberg’s fingerprints on the narrative:
“Some of President Biden’s top donors have latched on to a Star Wars analogy aimed at keeping nervous supporters from defecting: President Biden is like Yoda — old and frail yet wise and influential — whereas Donald Trump is like Jabba the Hutt, a gluttonous and powerful gangster.”
With a love of movie analogies, Katzenberg, just weeks earlier before the debate, had compared Biden to Mufasa from The Lion King:
Mr. Trump also happens to fit into Mr. Katzenberg’s theory of politics and movies: He likes to quote Walt Disney saying that movies are only as good as their villains. Mr. Trump is much easier to present to voters as a villain than, say, John McCain or Mitt Romney were.
If Mr. Trump is Scar from The Lion King, Mr. Katzenberg sees Mr. Biden as Mufasa, the wise father-king.
That same story notes that it may not be the best analogy: Scar kills Mufasa in a coup.
The Ankler wanted to figure out how we got here. We discovered an almost 60-year journey of political obsession and ambition that put Katzenberg, described as the “Golden Retriever” in a 1984 New York magazine story about Paramount — right where he’s always wanted to be — the power behind the throne. Yet with consequences that could make Quibi’s implosion look like child’s play.
Or as one source told New York: “This is classic Jeffrey.”
The ‘Squirt’ Years
1965: A 14-year-old Katzenberg, kicked out of summer camp for gambling, volunteered for New York City Mayoral candidate John Lindsay (a liberal Republican whose politics today track with a center-left Democrat). “If you needed six cups of coffee at 3 in the morning, Squirt could get them,” Lindsay told the New York Times in 1988, referring to Katzenberg by his campaign nickname.
1969: During Lindsay’s reelection campaign, Katzenberg served as an advance man (making sure that campaign events were properly orchestrated), a role that required him to carry a suitcase full of cash — reportedly as much as $100,000 (more than $860,000 today) — to pay for expenses.
1984: In a New York magazine profile of Paramount, where Katzenberg served as production chief, a friend said of Katzenberg, “Jeff is a kingmaker, not a king.”
The Young Guns Years
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1994: During a State Dinner honoring Russian President Boris Yeltsin, Katzenberg, David Geffen and Steven Spielberg were among the guests (while a top Disney executive, Katzenberg had become a major supporter of Bill Clinton, earning him the invitation). According to a New Yorker profile of Geffen, the trio decided to start DreamWorks at the dinner.
2006: Katzenberg says he met with then Senator Barack Obama in Los Angeles, and pulled him aside after a dinner, telling him, “If you decide to run for President, I’ll support you.” According to Katzenberg’s telling of this story in the video above, he said that Obama replied, “What’s in it for you?”
2012: During an official state visit by then Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation CEO at the time, scored a seat next to him at a State Department luncheon. Later that week, Xi and then Vice President Biden traveled to L.A. Katzenberg had been agitating to Biden that Hollywood needed more U.S. films in Chinese theaters and a higher percentage of the gross. Biden spent the day negotiating with Xi on the film quota and profit sharing as Katzenberg joined them for lunch. Biden and Xi eventually agreed on bumping the studios’ portion to 25 percent, and China increases the number of foreign-made 3-D and IMAX movies each year from 20 to 34.
2013: The left-leaning political magazine Mother Jones profiled Katzenberg, dubbing him “The New George Soros” as a way to signal his growing clout as a Democratic political fundraiser after helping the Obama re-election campaign with $30 million. “It’s hard to think of any other donor going back to the [1990s] or even further who did what he did,” the Sunlight Foundation’s Bill Allison told the publication. “He’s like soy sauce in Chinese food: He’s everywhere.”
The Power Broker Years
2014: BuzzFeed News reported that “those familiar with Katzenberg's political operation say he wants to be the central figure in the operation that could launch Clinton into office.”
2016: Katzenberg wrote an essay in THR (when Janice Min was its editor-in-chief; she later worked for 11 months at Quibi, departing before its launch) processing his feelings about Clinton’s loss: “An election is just an inning of a game with no ending. Throwing down the bat and ball and leaving the park is not an option. Last Wednesday morning, a new inning and a new season began, and I am taking the field, fiercely determined and ready to compete.”
June 2020: Katzenberg, who had donated to a number of candidates in the early stages of the Democratic primary, hosted a virtual fundraiser for Biden. When Biden spoke, he began, “Jeffrey, this is all your fault, getting me into this one.” The candidate then shared that he had visited Katzenberg before he’d entered the race, seeing if he’d raise money for one of the Presidential aspirants. “You said, ‘No, no, no, I want to talk about you doing this,’” Biden said. “I said, ‘No, no, no, not me, we’ll get somebody else.’”
The Biden 2024 Campaign
April 2023: Biden officially announced his reelection campaign, and named Katzenberg among his seven campaign co-chairs. “What better way to redeem yourself after Quibi than think you’re saving democracy,” one top Hollywood player told New York in January. Another added about Katzenberg: “There is no amount of attention that could ever be enough, and he’s lost his perch here [Hollywood], so he’s seized this new perch.”
May 2023: During an interview with the Financial Times, Katzenberg referred to Biden as “80 years young.” Katzenberg also asserted that Biden is “fit and engaged and has a high level of energy.”
June 2023: Polls as early as February revealed that 65 percent of Americans believed Biden was “too old for another term as president.” The WSJ reported that Katzenberg counseled Biden to “own” his age and turn it into an asset.
July 2023: During an interview with Reuters, Katzenberg described Biden as “energetic” and “effective.” Republican attacks on his age were actually quite misguided, he insisted. “President Biden's age is, in fact, his superpower,” Katzenberg said. “I think people have tried to paint it as a liability or a negative and I think they are going to fail at that.”
August 2023: A new AP poll suggested that 77 percent of the public believed Biden too old to be effective for four more years. Not just Republicans, though: 69 percent of Democrats believed the same of Biden.
December 2023: “The excitement and enthusiasm for having President Biden is front and center, and at present just couldn’t be higher,” Katzenberg told TheWrap in advance of an L.A. fundraiser he hosted, Biden’s first since announcing his reelection bid, with tickets going for as much as $929,600 a head. “People have missed him.”
January 10, 2024: Axios reported that Biden had been warned by the White House Counsel Office to stop giving big donors tours of the Oval Office. Katzenberg was the one organizing the “intimate gatherings,” which he used as selling points to potential donors who had doubts over Biden’s age.
“He was like, ‘Trust me. And if you don’t trust me, trust, but verify. Come with me and see for yourself and engage with the president,’” California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a longtime ally of Katzenberg, told the New York Times just last month. In the end, Newsom added, “He really was instrumental in getting people off the sidelines and getting them to dive headfirst in this campaign.”
January 19, 2024: New York published a story detailing Katzenberg’s outsized position in the campaign and concern about his role from top Democrats in Hollywood and Washington alike. People were worried that, in part because of Katzenberg, Biden’s campaign isn’t self-aware and doesn’t understand the optics that voters are getting from the campaign.
May 2024: At a small West Hollywood event for Axios, Katzenberg assured the audience there was a 100 percent chance of a debate happening, and offered up his idea for cutting off mics when the other candidate spoke (a tactic that would be used during the CNN debate, many believed to Trump’s benefit). “There’s a solution that . . . everyone in media and entertainment knows, it’s very simple,” Katzenberg said. “If you have two minutes to speak, you speak, and then at the end of two minutes the mic goes dead.”
June 13, 2024: “He talks about how this is what he wants to spend his time on and he can’t focus on anything else,” Rob Flaherty, Biden’s deputy campaign manager, told the New York Times. “He’s a really relentless guy.” To that end, the writer Peter Baker noted, “[Katzenberg] can be found in the halls of the West Wing offering advice and counsel. He was at Camp David the weekend before the State of the Union address, helping the president prepare for his nationally televised speech. He pushes the campaign to tape reaction videos of the president for social media and connected Biden aides with writers to help come up with jokes for the president to deliver at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.”
June 27, 2024: The day of the debate, Gallup released a poll it conducted from June 3-23. Americans were nearly twice as likely to say Biden is too old to be president (67 percent) than Trump (37 percent), and a full 76 percent of respondents expressed concern that Biden was too old to be President.
July 3, 2024: In the wake of Thursday’s debate catastrophe, the Financial Times reported that Hollywood’s denizens were furious with Katzenberg after his efforts to sell them — and the public — on Biden’s virility. “[Katzenberg] would say, ‘He’s fine, I was just with him,” said a Hollywood veteran and longtime Democratic donor. “He had this famous quote for everybody, which was ‘I’m happy to put you in a room with him and you’ll see for yourself.’ But nobody did it.”
“I’m not angry,” one entertainment executive said. “I’m sad.”