TMZ’s founder channels national anger with Washington

TMZ's Harvey Levin has tapped into growing anger with Washington, DC. (Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

TMZ’s founder Harvey Levin knows what the people want to see.

Usually, that’s celebrity drama and misbehavior by athletes. As the site flooded the internet this week with photos of lawmakers on vacation while Congress is in recess in the middle of a punishing partial government shutdown, it was clear he once again had his finger on the pulse.

To Levin, the photos captured something that endless stories about the partial shutdown — now the longest in the country’s history — could not. “I think you grab people where — you meet them where they want to be, and here they want these images, and the images tell the story for them, and that’s what we’re doing right now,” Levin said in an interview on CNN’s “The Story Is with Elex Michaelson.”

The flood of photos began with Sen. Lindsey Graham on vacation at Disney World in Orlando holding a bubble wand inspired by “The Little Mermaid.” Photos of other lawmakers — either in their home districts or on vacation during the two-week spring break recess — followed.

Levin said he issued a call for TMZ’s audience to send in photos after interviewing a Transportation Security Agency worker who was not getting paid because of the partial shutdown, caused by disagreements in Congress over immigration enforcement reform.

The partial shutdown had caused snaking lines at airports, a tangible sign of the increasing chaos felt throughout much of the country.

Republicans have so far resisted Democratic calls for changes to rein in U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, after two people were killed during an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis earlier this year, to win their votes to support funding DHS.

Levin repeatedly said that TMZ’s effort to shame members of Congress on break is entirely nonpartisan.

“We’re getting pictures of them in public, and I think the reason, I think the reason people are responding is this is absolutely nonpartisan,” he said. “When we write posts on this or talk about it on our shows or on social, we don’t mention their party affiliation because it doesn’t matter to us. This is a problem with Congress, not one party.”

A new CNN poll found Americans hold deeply negative views of both parties.

TMZ has received images of members all over the world — from Las Vegas to Scotland.

“We’ve been dealing with this and talking about it for months, and talking about voting everybody out and starting with a clean slate,” he said. Levin said he was planning on voting out his own congressman, who he said he liked.

“We’ve started this movement, OWTA, which is ‘out with their asses,’ and that means vote all of them out,” he told CNN, saying, “I think you need to clean house.”

“Clean house and do something radical and restore the power to the people.”

That a website better known for racing to announce celebrity deaths and releasing videos of misbehaving reality stars has turned its eye on DC says something about the anger roiling the nation.

“Their job is to compromise and keep the government open and do their jobs and they failed,” Levin said of Congress. “And then what do they do? They leave — for two weeks!”

He said the goal of TMZ’s campaign was to “juxtapose” pictures of “people like Lindsey Graham with a bubble wand to Disney World against this TSA worker who’s in a food line and a food bank.”

Graham later told the site he had been meeting with Trump officials in Florida and then went to Orlando to meet friends, before heading to his home state of South Carolina.

Asked why he thought the photos of Graham resonated so widely, Levin said: “because it’s so goofy.”

Hours after TMZ posted their story, Graham posted his own photo on Twitter, now called X, of himself shooting a gun back home in South Carolina.

“Spent some time breaking clays in Edgefield County today,” the senator wrote. “Doesn’t get much better than that.”

Elex Michaelson, CNN