Pro-Trump actor fires back at Whoopi Goldberg, encourages others to speak out
Actor Zachary Levi encouraged the “closeted conservatives” in Hollywood to come out publicly after his endorsement of former President Trump.
During an Instagram Live video Sunday, the 44-year-old “Shazam” star addressed “The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg’s claim that Hollywood was a “right-leaning town” where “very few people seem to bite it because they’re Republican.”
Levi disagreed with her comments, pointing out that she was only able to name actors Jon Voight and Dennis Quaid as examples out of the thousands working in Hollywood today. He added actors like them seem to only come out as Republican “at a certain level of your career to get away with it.”
“And what that means is there’s plenty — and by the way, they have sent me lots of messages — plenty of people in my industry in Hollywood that are terrified to publicly say that they would vote for Donald Trump or be conservative in any way,” Levi said. “That’s why you don’t see them. That’s why they’re not very prevalent or prominent because they know that there’s ramifications for this kind of s—.”
‘SHAZAM’ STAR ZACHARY LEVI RIPS HOLLYWOOD FOR MAKING ‘GARBAGE’ MOVIES: ‘THEY DON’T CARE ENOUGH’
Levi pushed back against fears of industry backlash by arguing it has been “eroded” after pandemic lockdowns and the recent writers and actors’ strikes, predicting it will soon be “f— gonzo.”
“So anyway, my cry to all of you out there, you closeted conservatives, closeted Trump voters, y’all, it’s now or never, you know what I mean?” Levi said. “Do whatever you feel like you need to do. If you need to come out publicly and say it, if you feel like you still can’t, then don’t. I would never pressure you to do that, but know that if what you’re afraid of is somehow the backlash of an industry that’s not going to exist very soon, then don’t let that hold you back.”
Levi endorsed Trump during an event for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard in September. He explained how he initially backed RFK Jr. and then switched his support for Trump after RFK Jr. suspended his campaign.
“In a perfect world, in whatever that would look like, perhaps I would have voted for Bobby,” Levi said. “But we don’t live in a perfect world. In fact, we live in a very broken one. We live in a country that has been hijacked by a lot of people who want to take this place way off the cliff, and we’re here to stop that.”
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“We are going to take back this country. We are going to make it great again, we’re going to make it healthy again. And so I stand with Bobby and I stand with everyone else who is standing with President Trump… Of the two choices that we have, and we only have two, President Trump is the man that can get us there,” Levi said.
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Critical battleground state shatters early voting records as Americans show up in droves
One of the most pivotal battleground states in the 2024 election has now seen more than 1.4 million residents cast their ballots early.
Georgia has been shattering turnout records since early voting began on Tuesday.
As of Monday morning, the Georgia state elections website showed 1,347,843 ballots were cast in person so far, while just over 80,000 absentee ballots have been returned and accepted.
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“Today there is Sunday voting in several counties. And AGAIN the voters have set another record,” Gabriel Sterling, chief operating officer in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office, wrote on X yesterday.
“As of 2:30 over 25,000 Georgians had cast ballots today. The previous Sunday record was 24k back in 2022. Keep up the great work counties and voters.”
The Sunday total wound up being just over 42,400 votes cast – nearly double the 2022 tally.
On the first day of early voting alone, Georgians cast more than 313,000 in-person ballots. That was 123% higher than the previous Day 1 record, according to Sterling.
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Total turnout so far accounts for nearly 20% of Georgia’s population of active voters. White voters made up the largest share of that total so far, followed by Black voters. Georgia women also slightly outnumbered men in the pre-Election Day tally by 55.4% to 45.4%.
Georgia has been a key focal point in the high-stakes White House battle between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Both sides have poured enormous amounts of time and resources into the state, which President Biden won by less than 1% in 2020.
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Harris spent her 60th birthday in Atlanta on Sunday, when she visited two churches alongside celebrity guest Stevie Wonder.
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Meanwhile, Trump will participate in a religious event himself in rural Georgia this week, according to WRBL.
The former president will be in Pike County on Wednesday in support of congressional candidate Brian Jack, who worked in the first Trump administration.
Data reporter points to unlikely group of voters keeping VP Harris ‘in the game’
CNN data reporter Harry Enten said Monday that non-college educated White voters have slightly shifted away from former President Trump over the last two election cycles, and that movement was likely keeping Vice President Kamala Harris “in the ball game.”
“What‘s so interesting, because we’ve seen so many groups this year moving in Donald Trump’s direction, so you would think his core group, his base of support, would be doing the same. But in fact, it‘s moving a little bit away from him,” Enten said.
Enten has also done reporting on other key voting demographics that have been shifting towards Trump over the last few cycles, such as Black voters and Hispanic voters. The data reporter pointed out that Trump won the non-college educated White voter group by 33 points in 2016, and by 31 points in 2020.
“The latest average of polls, he‘s only up by 27,” Enten said. “Now that may not seem like a lot, but given that we‘re seeing these double-digit gains, say among Black voters or among Hispanic voters in some of the polls, the fact that we‘re seeing this core group of supporters actually moving away from him, not just off of the 2016 baseline, but the 2020 baseline as well. I think that’s a rather interesting development.”
CNN DATA GURU SAYS HARRIS STRUGGLING WITH ‘UNDERPERFORMANCE’ FROM YOUNG VOTERS AMID TAYLOR SWIFT ENDORSEMENT
Enten said that the shift mattered because the non-college educated White voters make up 40% of the electorate nationally, but 51% of the electorate in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. The three states have all been bellwethers since 2008; beginning with Barack Obama that year, the winners of those states have also won the presidential election.
“Again, you see it back in 2016, Donald Trump won by 25. You‘ll see a small movement in 2020, Donald Trump winning by 22, and look at that, where we are today, again, Trump is ahead, but his margins are smaller. And when you have a shrinking margin for Donald Trump, among his core group that makes up the majority of voters, it can make up for big shifts among smaller groups in the electorate and this is why Kamala Harris is still in the ball game right now,” Enten said.
He added that Harris was losing “big league” among groups that make up a smaller portion of the electorate, but is “making it up” among bigger portions of the electorate.
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CNN’s John Berman said the movement was interesting and noted that Trump was making gains among voters of color.
“White voters and non-college Whites and college Whites, especially, they make up a lion’s share of the electorate and so even if you’re seeing small movements among these groups, among non-college Whites, slightly larger among college Whites. It more than makes up or at least makes up for the movement among voters of color,” Enten said.
Enten has also sounded the alarm on the idea that polling has historically underestimated Donald Trump in previous elections, which projected him losing soundly in both 2016 and 2020.
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“If Trump outperforms his current polls by just a single point, you take that Kamala Harris win and – look at this – Donald Trump gets 287 electoral votes,” he said, comparing it to Harris’ 251 votes in this scenario.
Blue haven hiding illegal immigrants from public view as election nears, official claims
The federal government has been bussing and flying illegal immigrants caught at California’s overwhelmed southern border out of state instead of potentially reverting to releasing them onto the street over fears it could look bad with just weeks before the November election, one local official said.
San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond said the U.S. Border Patrol informed him that the releasing of migrants was potentially set to resume last week. Around 155,000 migrants were released in San Diego from September 2023 through June, he told Fox News Digital.
Until June, migrants in San Diego were dropped off at the Iris Avenue train station, Desmond said. Currently, three buses leave the county daily to take migrants to Yuma, Arizona, he said. Additionally, three to four airplanes are flying illegal immigrants weekly from San Diego to the border city of McAllen, Texas, where facilities are not full, the supervisor said.
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“It appears to be the federal government trying to cover up by bussing people out of the area here instead of doing street releases,” Desmond said. “To me, I think the optics of having more people dropped off, or starting that drop-off process again, I think is politically harmful, and so they’re not going to do it until potentially after the election.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to the Border Patrol. Migrants were being mass released onto the streets of San Diego, overwhelming services and resources, Desmond recalled.
In addition to the migrants crossing the border, some come by boats, which pull up onto the shore, he said.
San Diego has long been a favorite border crossing point, in part because of its proximity to Tijuana, Mexico. From Oct. 6 through Oct. 12, the San Deigo Sector reported 3,016 migrant apprehensions from 59 countries, as well as 96 unaccompanied minor encounters.
In a video posted on X, Desmond said the number of migrants coming across the border in the San Diego Sector aren’t as visible, but rather “much more clandestine and a little bit of smoke and mirrors.”
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS ARRESTED IN WEALTHY FLORIDA COUNTY FOR SEXUAL CRIMES AGAINST A CHILD
He noted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, were heavily criticized by Democrats for flying migrants out of their states to other parts of the country.
The Border Patrol has been busing and flying some migrants from San Diego to other cities along the southern border for processing, a reversal from the days when migrants were sent to San Diego to deal with overflow in other locations.
The Biden administration has been heavily criticized for its border policies. In June, Biden took executive action to limit the number of new entries into the United States.
That was followed by a sharp drop in encounters by more than 50%. Despite the reduction, Biden still stressed the need for Congress to pass a bipartisan border bill. Vice President Kamala Harris has been repeatedly grilled about the border crisis.
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In a recent interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier, Harris touted a 2021 immigration bill she said would have paved the way to citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants.
“At the beginning of our administration, within practically hours of taking the oath, the first bill that we offered Congress – before we worked on infrastructure, before the Inflation Reduction Act, before the Chips and Science Act, before the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act — the first bill, practically within hours of taking the oath, was a bill to fix our immigration system,” she said.
Desmond said he’s heard from people of both political stripes about the need for the country’s immigration system to have a series of checks and balances.
“I think even in the Biden administration and people who are Democrats are perplexed as to ‘why are we doing this? Why are we not vetting these people?’” he said. “We want immigration, but we have to be vetting people. It just makes sense to do that.”
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Over the weekend, a group of about 2,000 migrants left Mexico’s southern border with Guatemala to head for the U.S. where they will possibly ask for asylum.
New details in One Direction singer’s death come to light following toxicology report
More details about the sudden death of famed One Direction star Liam Payne are coming to light. According to initial toxicology results, the 31-year-old died with cocaine in his system, The Associated Press reported.
Final toxicology results are still pending and not expected to be made public for weeks, but the preliminary report “suggested evidence of exposure to cocaine,” an official explained to the outlet before stressing that the initial results were not an accurate reading of the amount that was circulating in his blood when he died.
In addition, the official spoke to the outlet under the condition of anonymity. A preliminary autopsy report released last week revealed that the One Direction singer died from “polytrauma” and “an internal and external hemorrhage.”
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Payne died Oct. 16 as a “result of the fall he suffered from the balcony of the third floor room of the hotel in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Palermo where he was staying,” according to the National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office No. 16, temporarily headed by Marcelo Roma. He was 31.
Since news of the British musician’s death was reported, many stars in the industry have paid tribute to Payne, including Justin Bieber, who was among one of many icons to mourn the loss of Payne.
On Monday, Bieber shared a somber fan-made video on Instagram dedicated to Payne, encouraging followers to remember they “are allowed to grieve as a fan. You are allowed to love someone you’ve never met. You are allowed to admire someone for their art. You are allowed to cry, to pray, to feel like a part of you is gone.” He captioned it, “Rest Easy Liam.”
LIAM PAYNE, ONE DIRECTION SINGER, DEAD AT 31
Circumstances surrounding Payne’s death are still being investigated as a “dubious” death, although it appeared as though Payne had been alone when the fall occurred and that the musician was “going through some type of outbreak resulting from substance abuse,” according to the preliminary report.
Authorities confirmed Payne died after 5 p.m. at the Casa Sur hotel in the Palermo district, located on Costa Rica Street. An employee called the emergency line to ask for help for a guest who was “under the influence of drugs and alcohol who had destroyed some objects in the room.”
Upon arrival, officials discovered that “Payne had already fallen from the balcony of his room and died at the scene as a result of the severity of his injuries.”
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The Buenos Aires police said they found Payne’s hotel room “in complete disarray” with “various items broken.” Packs of clonazepam (commonly sold under the brand name Klonopin and works as a central nervous system depressant), energy supplements and other over-the-counter drugs were found strewn among his belongings, according to The Associated Press. Forensics teams also reported that a whiskey bottle, lighter and cellphone were retrieved from the internal courtyard where Payne’s body was found.
His body was then transferred to the Judicial Morgue, where an autopsy was performed between 9:45 and 11:05 p.m. Medical examiners requested histopathological, biochemical and toxicological testing.
“At this point, analysis of stomach contents, alcohol and blood toxins, vitreous humor, bile, nasal swab and urine was required to determine alcohols and toxins,” the report stated.
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Forensic experts reported finding 25 injuries “compatible with those caused by falling from a height,” according to the autopsy. They also noted that “craniocerebral lesions were adequate enough to cause death, while internal and external hemorrhages in the skull, thorax, abdomen and limbs, they contributed to the mechanism of death.”
In 2008, Payne was discovered by Simon Cowell while auditioning for “The X Factor” when he was 14. Despite being cut, he returned to the show two years later and joined Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson to form a supergroup that later placed third in the competition.
One Direction signed with Cowell after “The X Factor” and became one of the bestselling boy bands of all time.
The group found global fame for its hits, including “What Makes You Beautiful,” “Story of My Life” and “Best Song Ever.” They released five chart-topping albums in five years after competing on “The X Factor” and embarked on four world tours.
Payne had one child, a 7-year-old son, Bear, with ex-girlfriend Cheryl Cole.
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Harris’ team ‘exhausted’ by being called ‘band of idiots,’ says former Obama adviser
Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina said on MSNBC Sunday that the Kamala Harris campaign team is being forced to make tough decisions in advance of the election.
“[I]n politics you have three things: you have time, you have money, and you have volunteers,” Messina said. “And the one thing of those three you can’t go get more of is time. So there’s really difficult decisions being made in Wilmington right now about what you do with her time, what you do with the surrogates’ time.”
“It’s why you see these campaign people on TV and they look absolutely exhausted, because everyone is telling them they’re a band of idiots, and they should do it their way, and they have to make really, really difficult decisions,” Messina said of Harris’ campaign staff.
MSNBC SHOWS ENTIRE PANEL OF ARAB-AMERICAN VOTERS REFUSING TO BACK HARRIS
The Harris campaign has faced criticism for its relative lack of interviews, with former President Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, sitting down for at least 88 interviews since the Harris-Walz ticket was formed in early August, compared to at least 48 unscripted interviews for the Democratic presidential ticket thus far.
Messina explained that in a presidential campaign, multiple teams are vying for the attention of the candidate.
“There’s competing things,” Messina said. “[T]he press team wants her on these TV interviews, the fundraising team wants her to do one more big event in X city. The battleground states are saying, ‘We’ve gotta have her three more times in Michigan.’ And so making those decisions becomes the most important thing.”
TRUMP-VANCE TICKET HAS DONE COMBINED 88 INTERVIEWS SINCE AUGUST COMPARED TO 49 FOR HARRIS-WALZ
The latest Fox News polling shows Harris ahead by 6 points among voters from the seven key battleground states (within the margin of error for that subsample), and the candidates are tied at 49% each among voters in close counties (where the Biden-Trump 2020 margin was less than 10 points).
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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Longtime journalist says he’s never met a Trump supporter at work, citing ‘liberal bias’
Jay Caspian Kang, a staff writer for The New Yorker, ascribed media bias not to a conspiracy among journalists, but to the fact that the overwhelming majority of journalists are left-leaning.
Kang wrote a piece for The New Yorker, “How Biased Is the Media, Really?” in response to a recent Gallup poll showing that Americans’ trust in mass media remains not only historically low, but consistently abysmal for the third year in a row.
He responded by addressing multiple common critiques from Americans on both sides of the political spectrum, including the accusation that “Every news organization that feigns objectivity is actually heavily slanted toward the left. Not only that; the media is actively working with the Democrats to defeat Donald Trump.”
“The most obvious explanation for this impression is that the press corps is mostly made up of liberals,” he wrote in the piece, adding that “At prestige outlets—many of which do don the armor of impartiality—the imbalance skews a lot further to the left than what many outsiders might imagine.”
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He recalled Uri Berliner emerging as a whistleblower against NPR and the rise of progressive identity-politics, but argued the effect of such politics on journalism is ultimately “negligible compared with the effect of the fact that nearly everyone who works [in the media]” are “college-educated Democratic voters from middle- to upper-middle-class families. I have mentioned this before, but it bears repeating: in the course of a fifteen-year career that has included stints at radio shows, print outlets, digital media and television, I have yet to meet a Trump supporter at work.”
He recalled a specific quote about how journalists being an overwhelmingly liberal crowd isn’t a secret, but an obvious fact of life.
“The basic ideological homogeneity of the press corps isn’t some secret that’s tightly guarded by journalists or even the people who run news organizations,” he said. “In a 2023 interview in this magazine, A. G. Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times, said, ‘Almost everyone who works at the New York Times lives in the big city and graduated from college. That alone makes our staff unrepresentative. It means that we’re going to under-index in gun ownership, under-index in church attendance.’”
NPR EDITOR’S BOMBSHELL ESSAY CAUSING ‘TURMOIL’ AT LIBERAL OUTLET: REPORT
He responded to the quote by arguing, “As Sulzberger intimated, it’s difficult to believe that a press corps mostly made up of one type of person who votes one type of way would not be influenced by both their prior beliefs and their gaps in knowledge.”
He then argued that the New York Times is a prime example of this trend.
“And, indeed, the Times—who bears the brunt of media criticism across all political spectrums—has, nor do they have a columnist or editorial writer who openly supports Trump. The situation is largely the same at the big network-news shows and most newspapers,” he wrote. “So, yes, there is a liberal bias to the news.”
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