DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg has reportedly been sidelined in the Hollywood Democrat donor scene after his failed campaign in support of former President Joe Biden.
Writing on his Substack The Ankler, Matthew Frank noted that the Hollywood Democrat donor scene has come roaring back to life in recent months without Katzenberg.
“Katzenberg is really like the general that just lost three wars,” veteran political consultant Mike Murphy tells me. The Democrats “really want to bring up some colonels to take his place, and they will emerge.”
“There are a lot of disgruntled donors, but they also see that Trump’s barn’s on fire, so they’re not about to not throw some matches,” Murphy says. “They just hope they never hear from Jeffrey Katzenberg again.”
As Breitbart News reported in 2024, the former chairman of the Walt Disney Company, CEO and co-founder of DreamWorks “had to engage in some heavy lifting to convince skeptical Democrat donors that President Joe Biden isn’t too old to run again.”
Last year, Jeffrey Katzenberg — who serves as Biden’s re-election co-chair — faced significant skepticism from some important Democrat contributors who believed the octogenarian Biden isn’t up to another four years in office, according to a New York Times report.
Even after Katzenberg tried to allay their concerns, some still weren’t convinced, prompting Katzenberg to invite them to a White House meeting with Biden to persuade them to come aboard.
According to California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), Katzenberg told donors, “Trust me. And if you don’t trust me, trust, but verify. Come with me and see for yourself and engage with the president.”
“He started doing that in a consistent way,” said Newsom. “He really was instrumental in getting people off the sidelines and getting them to dive headfirst in this campaign.”
Katzenberg’s position as the top Hollywood Democrat donor player plummeted as the 2024 election folded, starting with Joe Biden dropping from the race and ending with former Vice President Kamala Harris’ crippling loss to Trump later that year in November.
After Biden’s disastrous debate against former President Trump, wherein he lost his thoughts mid-sentence at times and showed slow and slurred speech, donors who reportedly gave over $30 million to the Biden campaign, at Katzenberg’s insistence, began to express fury. One top Hollywood donor told Hot Source at the the time that “people are pissed.”
“Katzenberg asked for big, big checks and when people asked about the President’s health, he said, ‘No, no, no, he’s fine.’ But that was just a lie, a total lie,” the donor said.
“Jeffrey viewed Biden like he was an animated character that he could market to people. There’s real resentment towards him,” another power player was quoted as saying.
“Jeffrey has been spinning in ways beyond even what the campaign does. His pomposity is sky high,” another said.
Another source took it even further, saying that Katzenberg’s insistence on propping up Biden stemmed from his secret jealousy of DreamWorks co-founders David Geffen and Steven Spielberg following the implosion of his failed tech platform Quibi in 2020.
“Katzenberg has always been in the shadows of Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, who have quietly become elder statesmen,” another executive. “He’s like the little brother trying to prove himself to the older brothers. He can’t help himself.”
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