Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday received a $4 million boost for her “White Dudes for Harris” fundraiser, which aims to rally support among white men ahead of the 2024 election.
Organizers said more than 190,000 people attended the online event, which raised about $4 million for the Harris Victory Fund, while the YouTube livestream had a peak audience of about 64,000 viewers.
The total sale also included baseball caps bearing the group’s distinctive logo and the nickname “White Dudes for Harris.”
White celebrities, including Hollywood actors Jeff Bridges, Sean Astin, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Bradley Whitford and Mark Hamill, attended the telethon-style event and called on viewers to donate to Harris’ campaign and to “stand up” to former President Donald Trump.
“I was brought to this party not because I’m white, although I am white, but because I’m a man,” Bridges said by phone, beginning his remarks on muted audio.
The Oscar-winning actor, best known for his role as Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski in the Coen brothers’ film “The Big Lebowski,” said he was “thrilled” at the prospect of Harris becoming the United States’ first female commander in chief.
“A woman president. I’m for it,” he declared.
“Kamala is definitely our daughter,” Bridges said of the 59-year-old vice president.
The “White Men Support Harris” rally follows similar demographically-focused virtual rallies organized to secure support for Harris from key voting groups, including white women, Black women, South Asians and the LGBTQ community.
“I was thinking a lot about men and the unique challenges that many of them face and how those challenges can translate into violence and destructive tendencies towards others,” event organizer Ross Morales Lockett said of his motivation for spearheading White Dudes for Harris.
Morales Roqueto also addressed what he called “the elephant in the room.”
“A lot of people were uncomfortable with that call, and rightly so,” he said of the decision to give a platform to white men who support Harris. “Throughout American history, when white men organize, they usually wear pointy hats.”
“I think the skepticism is understandable,” Morales Lockett added, criticizing the political left for “ceding white male power to the MAGA right for too long.”
“The silent majority of white men are not MAGA supporters,” he argued.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was the first to mention a “white guy” among several potential running mates for Harris, while Morales Rocket introduced the former South Bend, Indiana, mayor as “the internet’s most popular vice presidential candidate.”
“The atmosphere right now is incredible,” Buttigieg said, arguing that “men would have a lot more freedom if the leader of the free world supported access to contraception and IVF.”
Biden administration officials also stressed that Harris’ supporters “should be driven by what we believe in, not just what we’re trying to stop.”
Here’s the latest on Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.
“It’s clear that Donald Trump is unfit to hold public office, and no one can better prosecute that than Kamala Harris,” he added.
J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois who has also been mentioned as a potential vice presidential candidate, offered brief remarks that slammed Trump and Republican running mate J.D. Vance.
“Donald Trump is a 34-time convicted felon, a convicted rape convict and a born liar. He’s a con man and J.D. Vance is his mini-me,” the governor said.
Pritzker repeatedly mentioned an online hoax that falsely claimed Vance, R-Ohio, included an X-rated anecdote about a couch in his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“Vance seems to make no attempt to hide his disdain for women,” the Illinois Democrat blasted after joking that he was on a Zoom call “on the couch against Trump and CAT” following a fundraiser for “white guys who support Harris.”
The other vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, derided Trump and Vance as “illiberal” and “robber barons.”
Walz credited event attendees with laying the groundwork for Harris’ path to victory.
“To win, you need a plan, and you guys have that,” he said, again criticizing Trump.
“How many times in this world does this son of a bitch wake up later to find out that a black woman kicked him out the door and sent him out the door,” the governor said. “And that’s something this guy’s going to have to live with for the rest of his life.”
