The Biden campaign raised $28 million ahead of a star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles headlined by actors George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and former president Barack Obama, a campaign official said Saturday.<\/p>\n
The massive haul \u2014 which surpasses the more than $25 million the campaign said it raised during a March fundraiser at New York\u2019s Radio City Music Hall that featured Biden and former presidents Obama and Bill Clinton \u2014 comes as Biden and Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, are in an effectively deadlocked race.<\/p>\n
Biden and his allies have sought to use his large cash advantage over Trump to demonstrate enthusiasm for his campaign heading into November\u2019s election, although Trump\u2019s fundraising has shown signs of picking up in recent weeks.<\/p>\n
The Biden campaign is calling Saturday\u2019s event the largest Democratic fundraiser in history. It said the same after the New York event featuring the three presidents.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis Saturday we are going to see an unprecedented and record setting turn out from the media and entertainment world,\u201d Jeffrey Katzenberg, a Biden campaign co-chair, said in a statement. \u201cThe enthusiasm and commitment for Biden\/Harris couldn\u2019t be stronger. We all understand this is the most important election of our lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n
Biden and Trump have struggled for months to change the dynamics of a matchup that polls show few voters want. Trump was recently convicted on 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush money payment to an adult-film actress, but even that historic verdict has done little to significantly alter the race.<\/p>\n
While Trump has sought to close the money gap with Biden, much of that fundraising has gone to pay legal bills related to several pending cases against him.<\/p>\n
The Hollywood event is slated to feature a discussion moderated by Kimmel with Obama and Biden. Kimmel, whose son has a congenital heart condition, has criticized Republican efforts to try to repeal the Affordable Care Act \u2014 Obama\u2019s signature domestic policy initiative \u2014 because it would take away the guarantee that those with preexisting conditions, like his son, receive health coverage.<\/p>\n
In the weeks leading up to the fundraiser, Clooney called a top White House adviser to complain about the president\u2019s criticism of action by the International Criminal Court against Israeli leaders, a case his wife Amal Clooney had worked on. Clooney expressed concern about Biden\u2019s denunciation of arrest warrants sought by ICC prosecutors for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, especially Biden\u2019s use of the word \u201coutrageous\u201d to describe those moves. The ICC prosecutors also sought warrants for top Hamas leaders.<\/p>\n
The actor in particular was upset about the administration\u2019s initial openness to imposing sanctions on the ICC, because his wife might have been subject to the penalties. The White House later moved away from the idea of sanctioning the court.<\/p>\n
The Biden campaign said the money raised at Saturday\u2019s event will go toward opening offices around the country, hiring organizers and launching ad campaigns to target key voters.<\/p>\n
Saturday\u2019s event caps a busy stretch of travel for the president, who flew to Los Angeles on Saturday directly from Italy, where he was attending the Group of Seven nations summit. Last week, Biden traveled to France to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.<\/p>\n
Biden has also traveled back and forth in recent days to Wilmington, Del., to support his son Hunter, who earlier this week was convicted on three charges of lying on a federal gun form and unlawfully possessing that gun for 11 days.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Biden campaign raised $28 million ahead of a star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles headlined by actors George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jimmy Kimmel and former president Barack Obama, a campaign official said Saturday. The massive haul \u2014 which surpasses the more than $25 million the campaign said it raised during a March fundraiser at New […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5360,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}