WASHINGTON — Flying through the night across nine time zones from southern Italy to southern California, President Joe Biden will shift focus from Russia’s challenge to Western unity to raising big money for his re-election campaign at a Hollywood fundraiser with George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Biden went straight from the Group of Seven summit of wealthy democracies, which focused on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to Los Angeles and the glitzy meeting that played out at the Peacock Theater on Saturday evening. The trip was interrupted only by a refueling stop outside Washington.
Former President Barack Obama will join megastar headliners Clooney and Roberts, and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will interview them all on stage. In a text message to donors beforehand, Roberts called it “a pivotal time in the election.” Kimmel wrote in his own text that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump “will hate this, so let’s do it.”
Top entertainment stars are increasingly lining up to help Biden’s campaign, hoping to boost fundraising and encourage potential supporters to take action against Trump before Election Day.
But in hanging out with the megastars this time, Biden is skipping a summit in Switzerland on ways to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. It’s a stark reminder that his responsibilities as president and his reelection efforts can sometimes conflict.
“We are going to see unprecedented and record-breaking turnout from the media and entertainment world,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul, major Democratic donor and co-chair of Biden’s campaign, said in a statement.
At a Biden fundraiser in March at Radio City Music Hall, on the other side of the country in Manhattan, late-night host Stephen Colbert interviewed the president, Obama and former President Bill Clinton. It grossed a then-record $26 million. The Biden campaign says it is still tallying receipts ahead of Saturday’s event and likely won’t release a projected total until closer to the start.
Trump has pulled in even bigger numbers.
He surpassed Biden’s event in New York in April, raising $50.5 million at a meeting of major donors at billionaire investor John Paulson’s Florida home. The former president’s campaign and the Republican National Committee announced they had raised as much as $141 million in May, supplemented by tens of millions of dollars in contributions that poured in after Trump’s guilty verdict in his criminal hush-money trial.
That post-conviction surge came after Trump and the Republican Party announced they had raised $76 million in April, far more than Biden and the Democrats’ $51 million for that month, and a fundraising advantage that Biden had built up earlier in the race, narrowed.
Money race aside, missing the summit in Ukraine means Biden Vice President Kamala Harris will be deployed on her own whirlwind trip — from Washington to Switzerland and dashing back in just over 24 hours.
During a joint appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the G7 summit, Biden said Harris would be a strong U.S. representative in Switzerland. But Zelenskyy previously suggested that Biden not attending was “not a strong decision.”
“I wish President Biden would be there in person,” he said late last month, predicting that Putin would “stand and applaud” if Biden does not come. Putin and Russian representatives are also not going to the summit.
In another sign that his day job clashed with his political goals, Biden’s fundraiser was expected to draw protests from pro-Palestinian activists angry about his administration’s handling of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Such demonstrations have become common in recent months wherever Biden goes, including outside his fundraiser for Radio City Music Hall.
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Superville reported from Bari, Italy.
