US Politics

Inside the glitzy fundraiser where Biden lost George Clooney

Author: Dan Diamond, Samuel Oakford and Carol D. Leonnig Source: The Washington Post

July 12, 2024 at 09:25

From left, late-night talk-show host Jimmy Kimmel, President Biden and former president Barack Obama at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on June 15. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

At the June 15 event at L.A.’s Peacock Theater, some donors said this week that they noticed Biden seemed slow. He seemed frail. As he greeted donors lined up for photos, he trailed off or spoke too quietly in small talk conversation to be heard.

Hollywood executives, performers and thousands of other Californians filed into a Los Angeles theater last month, expecting a star-studded fundraiser for President Biden, backed by actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts, that would inject millions of dollars into Biden’s static campaign and launch him on a path to beat Donald Trump in November.

Instead, many attendees — led by Clooney — now say they watched a dud and a preview screening of what the nation saw two weeks later in Biden’s prime-time debate against Trump.

“I said to my wife, either he’ll do great at the debate, and we’ll realize he was just tired tonight, or he’ll perform like this and then the whole country will be talking about it,” said Jon Favreau, an Obama White House speechwriter who attended the event.

Reflecting on the June 15 event at L.A.’s Peacock Theater, some donors said this week that they noticed Biden seemed slow. He appeared frail. As he greeted donors lined up for photos, he trailed off or spoke too quietly in small-talk conversation to be heard.

The lingering doubts among Biden’s closest supporters that evening help explain why support for him has collapsed so quickly in the days after the June 27 presidential debate: the debate confirmed many voters’ long-held suspicions that the elderly president was not up to the task of campaigning. The reactions among attendees of the event also raise questions about why Biden’s allies did not speak up sooner about their concerns, allowing his campaign to insist for months that Biden was vigorous and sharp behind-the-scenes, when many now say that was not their own experience.

Measured by dollars, the evening was a success: it brought in more than $30 million for Biden’s campaign, setting a record for a single political fundraiser. The president, who had just flown in from Italy that morning, first met with top donors and allies in a two-hour-plus series of private receptions and photos before taking the stage with former president Barack Obama and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel in the 36-minute main event.

But even with Kimmel posing softball questions, and Obama frequently interjecting to provide support, Biden struggled to explain key parts of his campaign platform, with attendees saying that the president frequently stumbled over his remarks, trailed off or was simply confusing.

Some attendees said it was even worse at the smaller receptions before Biden took the stage. Greeting hundreds of supporters for grip-and-grin photos, the president stumbled over small talk and seemed frail, according to six attendees. For high-level donors who were meeting the 81-year-old Biden for the first time, several said they found his decline shocking.

“It felt like he was still the smart, witty guy we’ve all followed for many years, but the volume and speed are turned way down — to an alarming level,” said one longtime Democratic supporter who, like several others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss her personal experience meeting the president after she and her husband donated $100,000.

Making small talk with the current and former presidents while preparing for a photo, the donor said that she and Obama shared a brief joke that Biden initially seemed to miss. The current president only attempted a retort “in a barely audible voice” after the photo was over and others had moved on, she said.

Biden campaign staff and allies have characterized the criticism as unfair and retroactive second-guessing, pointing to the president’s travel and his stamina through the roughly three-hour long event. They note, too, that the Kimmel portion of the evening was open to the media.

“Several reporters were present for the President’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel at the L.A. fundraiser,” Lauren Hitt, a campaign spokesperson, said in a statement. “None of them reported out anything like this at the time.”

The donor said she and her husband were asked by friends after the event about Biden’s condition and “struggled to answer them honestly,” fearful of eroding Biden’s support.

“We were worried that if we told the truth — that President Biden was stiff, slow and dare we say it, fragile — that we risked losing their support for the president,” said the donor. “It was painful to be deceptive. Now, we realize we were not alone in withholding what we experienced.”

Another donor said he focused on what he considered the evening’s high points, such as Biden’s rousing slam on the Supreme Court’s recent rulings.

“You want to believe in the possible,” he said.

George Clooney during the Kennedy Center Honorees Reception at the White House in December 2022. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)

The fundraiser appears to have been a breaking point for Clooney. In an op-ed in the New York Times on Wednesday, he wrote that he loved and supported Biden — but that he believed Biden should drop out of the race, in part because of what he had observed at the event.

“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney wrote. “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”