Trump is Coming for Hollywood

DEI Hard with a Vengeance, but can we fight back?

The last few weeks have shown that Trump is working hard to go after all kinds of institutions. While he lets Elon doge the government itself, Trump and his Executive Order sharpie have gone after huge swaths of non-governmental society like academia, the free press and law firms. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that the FCC announced it’s investigating ABC and parent company Disney for “invidious forms of DEI discrimination.”

Hollywood has escaped Trump for the last two months, but it’s clear he’s coming for it. Hard. And he’s going to do the same tactic he’s done with the other segments of civil society. It’s the bully’s playbook: Pick on individual institutions, shake them down one by one, and when they cave, intimidate all the others into submission.

With academia, he went after Columbia and they capitulated. Though perhaps the most infamous in recent days, Trump’s also bullied countless other universities into canceling DEI initiatives, firing staff and literally micromanaging entire departments and majors. He went after his own alma mater, Penn (which missed the chance to fight back by releasing his transcript). And he’s disappeared student protesters in the cynical name of defeating “anti-semitism.”

Instead of circling the wagons (a classic Hollywood western trope, to be sure) academic institutions are mostly digging their heads in the sand and complying (with notable exception of Georgetown - which knows a thing or two about how to exorcise their demons). Same for Big Law, which saw the capitulation this week by such big firms as Paul Weiss and Skadden. In the press, Trump went after CBS and ABC and they settled absurd law suits despite clear First Amendment protection. So when the White House kicked the venerable Associated Press out of the press room for still referring to “The Gulf of Mexico,” no other major legacy press institutions rallied around them.

The next big institution on the list? Hollywood. It’s already started. Oh, you thought we could stay under the radar? Remember, Trump was a TV star for over a decade. He understands Hollywood better than any president since Ronald Reagan. And his appetite for curbing culture to his whims has already begun with his revamping of the Kennedy Center and Smithsonian.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just announced it’s investigating Disney and ABC over “invidious” DEI programs. (I’m not sure they know what that word means.) But judging by the M.O. of the last two months, and Trump’s history in general, it’s easy to predict who he’ll go after next in Hollywood. And maybe what Hollywood’s response will be, too.

• The Studios. After Disney, the Trump FCC will pick off all the other big networks and studios like Scar hunting a pack of wildebeests. They’ll go after the vulnerable ones first: The ones that still have to abide by FCC regulations. Or have other regulatory obligations to the federal government or other soft spots due to their other businesses. NBC/Universal by the FCC. CBS by its news lawsuits. Amazon’s Bezos is already kowtowing. Warners by Zazlav’s Wall Street handwringing. They all have some kind of weakness that the Trump administration will find and exploit.

• The Big Agencies. We all know the alphabet soup of Hollywood agencies are the grease that keeps Hollywood wheels churning. Trump knows this, too, and he’ll figure out their soft spots usually involve money and their big hedge fund owners. So if Trump doesn’t like a Robert De Niro rant, maybe he’ll go after CAA? Or Mark Hamill, maybe Gersh? Who made packaging fees on Mark Burnett and The Apprentice? I’m guessing CAA. I don’t want to give them too many ideas.

• The Unions. Trump - who still collects a 6-figure SAG pension even after quitting the union himself - isn’t going to shy away from biting the hand that fed him. Every Hollywood union has some form of DEI initiatives. For some, it’s embedded in their contracts. For example, SAG-AFTRAs Modified Low Budget contract tops out if you have a budget of $700,000. But if you use “Diversity-in-Casting” then it goes up to $950,000.

• The Oscars and other awards. The Academy - beholden to multimillion dollar contracts with ABC - isn’t going to be immune. They’ve had a diversity requirement baked into their Best Picture rules for the last couple years. As part of it, they’ve also been building a detailed database (called RAISE) of both cast and crew who’ve worked on all these films, including race, gender, sexual orientation, disability, health and nationality. Hollywood doesn’t have a great history with “lists.” What happens when the DOJ subpoenas the list under some specious legal theory or executive order? Get ready for a lot of people to get outed “accidentally” on Signal.

• Film Schools. Many of the academic institutions the Trump administration has already gone after includes the top film schools in America: USC, NYU, Columbia, UCLA, Chapman, LMU and more - mostly for their DEI programs. But for many of these universities - especially on the graduate level - Trump’s anti-immigration moves also have the potential to decimate their film schools and the one group of students that pays full tuition. ICE is disappearing international students just for writing op-eds. You think they won’t start doing their version of Hollywood coverage on student-written screenplays looking for aberrant margin formatting and short films with dubious mis-en-scène? Elon Musk has his tentacles everywhere: For any film school thinking of using AI to read scripts, think again. And why would a wealthy Chinese family risk sending their kid to an American film school where their visa could get yanked at the drop of a hat?

• Film Festivals. Almost every film festival these days also asks demographic questions on their entry forms, has programming or discounts for diverse groups, or inclusive labs for one thing or another. In Trump’s America he’ll find new and unique ways to pressure festivals, arts organizations and especially their sponsors. Maybe Sundance moving to Rocky Mountain sky-blue Colorado will insulate them from the MAGA wrath for a little while, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Hollywood doesn’t have a very good history when it comes to standing together and defending free speech and artistic expression. Remember McCarthyism? The Blacklist? The Hollywood Ten? We might also want to remember The Waldorf Conference where all the studio executives secretly met and sheepishly agreed to the Blacklist. It’s only a matter of time before the Republican-led House catches up to Trump and hauls Mark Hamill or Ted Sarandos before a HUAC-like committee on DEI or Woke Culture or whatever “invidious” term they come up with next. Remember, Trump learned at the knee of Roy Cohn who was also the architect of the Red Scare.

The answer? Hollywood has to rally itself and hang together! Don’t let our institutions get picked off one by one like academia, law firms and the press have done. Stand up for each other and we can’t get pushed down! Like an old Hollywood western, we need to circle the wagons if we expect to survive.