A handful of Hollywood elites and top Democrat politicians flocked to a massive campaign fundraiser Monday evening discussing their support for the new presidential nominee Kamala Harris and encouraging their party voters to get out to the polls this November.
The “White Dudes For Harris” zoom conference began Monday evening at 8 p.m., bringing on a flurry of Hollywood liberals alongside major Democrat officials, such as U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper.
Just before the first major actor came out, the Democratic moderator introduced National Director of the Working Families Party Maurice Mitchell, who joked about joining the call as a black man.
“I want to address the obvious, I’m not sure if you noticed, but I am not a white man. Yet, here I am opening up the White Dudes for Kamala call and stranger things have happened,” Mitchell said before explaining his stance for joining the men.
Shortly after, Hollywood elite Jeff Bridges joined the call to discuss his support for the vice president, stating how “beautifully” President Joe Biden “passed the baton” to Harris after withdrawing from the 2024 presidential race on July 21.
Buttigieg then came on to call out former President Donald Trump’s campaign against Harris, while applauding Harris’ campaign theme as “freedom” as he called out the freedoms men gain if the vice president were to win the office.
“Men are also more free in a country where we have a president who stands up for things like access to abortion care. Men are more free when the leader of the free world and the leader of this country supports access to birth control and to IVF. And certainly men like me, and my husband, are more free when we have a president who supports our freedom to get married to who we love,” Buttigieg said.
Others such as Cooper and American singer Josh Groban then joined on before the moderator introduced “West Wing” actor Bradley Whitford, who highlighted the “variety of whiteness” on the campaign call.
“What a variety of whiteness we have here. We got the dude, we got Pete, it’s like a rainbow of beige,” Whitford began.
“I keep saying over the last eight years, if there is a God, she’s a terrible writer. If I walked into the West Wings writers room and said this is going to be our Republican candidate. A felon, an adjudicated rapist, let alone the tan and the hair. It would’ve been seen as condescending,” Whitford said before continuing to speak about women’s rights.
Additional guests included others such as Democratic California Rep. Adam Schiff, actor Josh Gad, Senior Advisor to the U.S. President for Infrastructure Coordination Mitch Landrieu, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and union leader Jimmy Williams Jr. All of the guests discussed their enthusiasm for Harris as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, and called for voters on the zoom to take action by either donating or helping with the campaign.
The latest campaign fundraising call comes after “White Women For Harris” met on Zoom over the weekend, reaching nearly 200,000 people, according to FOX59. The movement for the calls notably came after the Harris campaign held both a “Black Women for Harris” and “Black Men for Harris” fundraiser Zoom call, both of which had over 40,000 viewers, the outlet reported.
During the 2020 election men were nearly evenly divided between Trump and President Joe Biden, according to Pew Research. While Trump had won the male demographic in 2016 by 11 points, Trump saw a slight lead among women in the 2020 election versus 2016 as he jumped from 39% to 44%, the data showed.
Biden, however, saw a nearly identical pull of women compared to former 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, the Pew Research Center reported.
The ‘White Dudes’ fundraiser allegedly raised over 2 million as the call went over 90 minutes long, with over 100,000 viewers, according to the moderator at the time of publication.
Featured Image Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America
