Trump’s Hollywood Ambassador Jon Voight Meets with CA Gov. Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) met privately Thursday afternoon with President Donald Trump’s “ambassador” to Hollywood, Oscar-winning actor Jon Voight, to discuss ideas for saving the film industry.
Hollywood has been losing jobs due to high costs, damaging union strikes, artificial intelligence, and the tax incentives offered by competing film locations elsewhere, such as Vancouver, Atlanta, and overseas sites.
Newsom is an implacable opponent of President Trump, but evidently is willing to work with him to save one of California’s most important industries — and the source of many of his own political donations.
Politicoreports:
The pair met privately Thursday afternoon in Century City, the sleek Los Angeles business district, to discuss their shared interest in boosting the state’s iconic industry, which has increasingly moved its operations to other states and overseas.
They discussed Voight’s proposal to reshore the American film industry through a combination of federal tax credits and tax code changes, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting granted anonymity to discuss it. They also talked about Newsom’s push to double California’s film tax incentive, which is currently winding its way through state budget talks.
As Breitbart News reported, Voight joined Hollywood unions last month in a joint letter to the president asking him to push for federal tax credits that could save film and television production in the United States.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
