EXCLUSIVE: “Why isn’t Joe Biden here? 60 minutes this evening? Why wasn’t it his turn? Meet the press this morning?”
Those are the questions an irritated top Hollywood donor had Sunday as the beam of the president’s disastrous June 27 debate performance continued to grow, despite the White House and campaign’s best efforts to pretend it was just a bump in the road. was re-elected.
“They need to stop blaming other people, the president needs to show people he can do his job,” added the donor, who attended the fundraiser at Rob and Michele Reiner’s home on Saturday evening with Vice President Kamala Harris. “They need to get it on TV now!”
Expression of impatience at best and anger at worst about the campaign and the weak voice of the 81-year-old Biden and the meandering confrontation with a surprisingly focused and unsurprising falsehood that Donald Trump spread on CNN on Thursday, some deeply rooted Tinseltown contributors on both Coasts tell Deadline that the meeting with the Veep and Biden himself this weekend provided minimal reassurance, to put it kindly.
“It’s all from the teleprompter, don’t worry,” a New York donor said Sunday. “I’m damn worried!” A number of donors in both the Big Apple and the City of Angels said they are taking a wait-and-see approach, as Deadline reported on June 28.
President Joe Biden and Elton John speak on stage at the grand opening ceremony of the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center in NYC on June 28. Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for the Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center, a program of Pride Live
Some donors are more cautious and speak to the campaign privately. Others, not so much. “Let’s see what the plan is this week, let’s see how he turns this around,” said a prominent small-screen showrunner and usually reliable Democratic donor. “I want to see them flood the area.”
Amid calls from the New York Times Editorial board and columnists, New Yorker editor David Remnick, and others for the struggling Biden to give up as quickly as possible in the service of the nation, is a repeated response that if the current Camp David incumbent wants to stay in the race, he must take a drastically new position.
“To start with, Biden should sit down live with George Stephanopoulos for an hour this week,” says a well-connected producer. “Make it an event visit, come clean.”
“Stupid speeches, hand-picked crowds will no longer suffice. We’re going to lose this thing if things don’t turn around soon,” the film and TV vet continued. “If he can’t do it, it’s sad to say, (but) we need someone who can stand up to Trump and his audience.”
What was especially frustrating for one of Hollywood’s top supporters was the Biden team blaming pundits and others in the post-debate fallout. “We all saw what we saw,” the supporter said.
A POTUS interview is already attracting the attention of certain media circles these days and is not an entirely original idea after a major blunder or crisis. It worked more than once for Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. Compared to his predecessors, however, Biden has done relatively little.
Citing data from the White House Transition Project: The Washington Post reported in April that Biden had done 118 one-on-one media interviews as of April 30, compared to 97 for Trump at that point in his term and 71 for Obama. The White House has often pushed back on these types of numbers, noting that Biden has held regular informal question-and-answer sessions with the media — 570 — compared to 623 for Trump at this point in his term. As White Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the Deadline ElectionLine podcast in April, POTUS appreciates the power and reach of local TV to reach voters through the networks.
Neither network has announced an interview with Biden.
Spokespeople for ABC News, CNN and CBS News did not have any updates, and a spokesperson for NBC News did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The president last interviewed ABC News’ David Muir in Normandy, France, earlier this month during the 80th anniversary commemorations of D-Day.
The tone we’re hearing now that donors want for an in-depth interview is that it would be its own brand of event television, not fleeting moments during the campaign. Biden was able to explain what happened and why he had such a bad night.
In fact, several Hollywood political residents, many of whom were at the Harris fundraiser on Saturday, believe the best way out of this mess for President Biden, if he wants to have a chance of taking on Trump, is to lean more on his vice president to seem. “He should go on CNN with (Anderson) Cooper. I hate to say this, he needs to move on with Hannity like Newsom did and give back better than he gets,” said another donor. ‘Show people that he can handle the tough questions.’
In apparent damage control mode, the vice president was suddenly all over the post-debate coverage on June 27. Harris emphasized that the president had “a slow start” but finished strong, drawing praise from the likes of Anderson Cooper, who told the vice president, “Neither person on that stage tonight has advanced the discussion as coherently as you just did.’
A somewhat familiar face at Rupert Murdoch’s Fox and an adopted political son for Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom previewed a possible bid for the White House in 2028 when he wiped the floor with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis during a meeting by Hannity organized debate on November 30, 2023.
At this time, with some media outlets reporting a “come to Jesus” moment among family members at the presidential retreat (something Biden aides deny), Joe Biden’s overall schedule for next week has not been made public. The president will gather with family for a photo portrait of Annie Leibovitz and will remain at Camp David until Monday. He will return to the White House on July 1 around 8:20 PM ET, the news agency confirmed late today. With Independence Day approaching this week, Biden will visit a DC Emergency Operations Center and fundraiser on Tuesday, a Medal of Honor ceremony on Wednesday and a barbecue with service members on Independence Day. Nothing further has been announced.
Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Donald Trump’s communications director, wrote on Meet. However, that will not be enough to prove to the American people that he can last another four years.”
He pointed to a probing email author Whitney Tilson sent to top Democrats that included four ideas to address the post-debate fallout. They include holding an hour-long press conference at the White House and continuing it every week until after the election; participate in an interview 60 minutes this week; meeting with the editors of The New York Times; and another appearance on a late-night show, as he did earlier this year with Seth Meyers.
The recommendations all came with a sense of urgency, that Biden needed to act quickly to correct course.
Consistent with much of what Tilson wrote, a longtime political operative told Deadline that Biden should conduct in-person interviews and town halls every week until the Democrats’ convention in Chicago in late August. “More events with regular people, that’s what Joe Biden used to excel at,” the agent added, noting the contrast with Trump and his courtiers at Mar-a-Lago.
Moreover, Sunday evening is the end-of-quarter deadline for campaign contributions, and the Biden/Harris could face another embarrassment if they again fall significantly short in the fight against the Trump machine.
When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, the debate debacle proved to be a cash cow for the Biden/Harris campaign. The reelection effort raised $27 million between June 27 and 28, according to a June 29 memo sent to influential donors by Campaign Chair Jen. O’Malley Dillon. However, that $27 million negates what the campaign could have yielded if the president had really shown himself strong.
One recipient of O’Malley Dillion’s correspondence called it “tone deaf.” Another insider dismissed the memo as part of a “don’t believe your eyes strategy,” citing social media posts from leading Democratic donor John Morgan.
“Joe Biden had a chance to make his case and he blew it,” a major check-writing donor from West LA exclaimed this weekend. “He has a small window to once again present his case directly to the American public, and I hope they give him another chance.”
