Hollywood liberals helped raise a lot of money for Republicans last month, according to Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
At a Wednesday media lunch hosted by Winning for Women, a right-of-center nonprofit focused on outreach to female candidates and voters, McDaniel told The Federalist to expect record fundraising numbers from the RNC in August, thanks in part to Hollywood’s attempted boycotts of Republican donors. “We’re going to post record numbers in August, and I’m going to thank Hollywood for helping us raise more money. Thanks for boycotting our donors because we raised so much more,” McDaniel said.
“Please keep doing it,” she added, “because I’ll continue to raise more money, because it’s so frightening to suppress speech. That is not what our country is about.”
Those details about fundraising came in response to The Federalist‘s question about how the RNC plans to handle culture war issues in 2020. McDaniel said some Democrats’ “radical, all or nothing, ‘if you don’t believe with us, you’re evil, you’re racist, you’re a bigot,'” approach is actually “turning off a lot of people.” The chairwoman specifically cited an effort by the stars of “Will & Grace” to out attendees of an upcoming Trump fundraiser in Beverly Hills, noting “even Whoopi Goldberg” came out against the bid on Monday’s episode of “The View.” McDaniel is a host of the fundraiser.
“You don’t see me saying, ‘Boycott “Will & Grace.”’ If you like ‘Will & Grace,’ go fricking watch ‘Will & Grace.’ I don’t care,” McDaniel said, later mentioning she once “loved” the show and its leading lady, Debra Messing. Over the weekend, Messing called on the press to print a list of attendees at the upcoming Beverly Hills fundraiser.
“To see them come after and say, ‘We’re going to shame you.’ It’s happening in Pittsburgh right now. You saw what happened with [Rep. Joaquin] Castro bringing those donors out and putting their names online,” McDaniel said on Wednesday. “I mean that is just — I think everybody should be repudiating that. I don’t see that from the Democrats. I don’t see them repudiating enough.”
