How Mel Gibson Became Trump’s Accidental Ambassador

Surprise! You’ve Just Been Named Envoy to Hollywood

Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them when Donald Trump posts about it on Truth Social. That appears to be the case with the president’s new “ambassadors” to Hollywood — Mel Gibson, Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone — who suddenly find themselves appointed Trump’s “eyes and ears” in the entertainment industry. “They will serve as Special Envoys to me for the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK — BIGGER, BETTER. AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!” Trump posted a few days before his inauguration. “It will again be, like The United states of America itself, The Golden Age of Hollywood!” Gibson, for one, had no idea he was even up for the job. “He said he found out the same way everybody did — people started calling him saying they read about it online,” a source tells Rambling Reporter.

Voight, 86, and Stallone, 78, have at least met Trump before — in fact, Voight spoke at an inauguration eve event (referring to Trump’s election as “the greatest win of all time”), while Stallone introduced Trump at an America First gala at Mar-a-Lago in November (calling him a “second George Washington”). But Gibson, 69, doesn’t appear to have ever spoken to Trump. “They once waved hello at a basketball game,” says the source. “You know, sort of saluted each other from a distance, the way people do.” In any case, the parameters of the trio’s ambassadorial powers have yet to be determined, and, as far as Rambling can tell, none of the new envoys has yet reached out to one another to discuss plans for making Hollywood BIGGER, BETTER AND STRONGER. One thing’s for sure, though: Kelsey Grammer, Zachary Levi, Dennis Quaid and Roseanne Barr have got to be feeling left out.

Are Scorched Teslas Spewing Toxic Fumes in Malibu and the Palisades?

It turns out Teslas aren’t always better for the environment than gas-engine cars — at least when they catch on fire.

One of the many trials facing first responders battling the L.A. wildfires these past few weeks has been the large number of EVs that were engulfed by the infernos. California is the country’s largest electric vehicle market, accounting for one-third of national sales, with markedly high concentrations registered in neighborhoods like Pacific Palisades, Malibu and Altadena. And although EVs are 10 times less likely than gas cars to go up in flames, when they do, they’re far more difficult to extinguish. EV fires burn much hotter (up to 2,500 degrees, according to some reports), much longer (reportedly up to 40 times longer than other cars) and require much more water to extinguish (sometimes tens of thousands of gallons). When EVs ignite in a huge conflagration, they also can release heavy metals and other hazardous materials from their batteries, adding to the noxious plume from the combustion of homes, appliances, furniture, solar arrays, pipes and infrastructure.

“The smoke from burning buildings and cars is much more toxic than burning wood,” says Anthony Wexler, director of the Air Quality Research Center at the University of California, Davis. “There’s also ash on the ground even after the fires are gone, and that ash is also toxic.” When that ash contains the noxious remains of lithium-ion packs that have caught fire, in addition to lead and asbestos from home fires, cleaning up can be challenging, requiring special disposal procedures. “FEMA is going to need to come and clean up at some point,” he adds.

Still, Wexler doesn’t think drivers should give up on EVs just because of the wildfires: “It’s not like burning a gas-powered car is a pristine activity.” — BRETT BERK

Today, the Gulf of America. Tomorrow … Trumpland

Donald Trump has a long history of redrawing maps — remember when, in 2019, he used a Sharpie to change the course of Hurricane Dorian? — but he’s never tested his topographical powers quite like this before. Will Google Maps start calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America after the president’s day-one executive order? Will Apple Maps drop Denali and again refer to that giant mountain in Alaska as McKinley? And what about Rand McNally? How will the world’s most famous atlas makers deal with Trump’s rebrandings? After all, they sell maps in Mexico, too.

For now, the answers are mixed. A contact at Rand McNally verbally shrugged his shoulders and promised to get back in touch whenever the 169-year-old map publisher figures it out.Apple hasn’t responded to Rambling’s request for clarification. But Google announced on X that it would be changing the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and Denali (renamed by President Obama in 2016 to honor Alaska’s Athabascan people) back to McKinley. “We have a longstanding practice of applying name changes when they have becen updated in official government sources,” Google posted.

That government source: the Department of the Interior’s Geographic Names Information Services. “Interior is working diligently to comply with the president’s executive order quickly,” a department spokesperson tells THR. Still, not everybody is immediately falling in line with Trump’s edicts. The Associated Press has decided on a split decision, changing Denali to McKinley but keeping the Gulf in Mexico. And, according to a frequent flyer source, the in-flight map on least one major airline is still identifying the body of water off the coast of Tamaulipas as the Gulf of Mexico.

Of course, the real test of Trump’s geographical clout will come when he eventually purchases Greenland, which he keeps promising to do. Trumpland seems like an historical inevitability.

This story appeared in the Jan. 29 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.