President Joe Biden swept into Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 8, diving into in a celebrity-studded fundraising swing ahead of his 2024 re-election campaign. First lady Jill Biden visited the Southland separately on Friday to tour women’s health research labs. A large-scale protest greeted the president’s arrival at his first event, a star-packed West L.A. fundraiser.
After arriving at LAX aboard Air Force One just after 5 p.m., Biden was whisked off via helicopter to Santa Monica Airport, where he was greeted by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Rep. Ted Lieu, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, Santa Monica Mayor Gleam Davis and L.A. County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath. Jill Biden arrived in the area first, landing early Friday afternoon at Hollywood Burbank Airport.
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The president’s motorcade arrived at the Westside home of Michael Smith and James Costos at 6:05 p.m. after a 20-minute drive up the 405, and along Sunset Boulevard past UCLA. The chants of hundreds of protesters in nearby Holmby Park echoed as Biden’s entourage rolled up to the much ballyhooed party, hosted by an array of glitzy celebrities and political powerbrokers, including Steven Spielberg, Rob Reiner and Shonda Rhimes.
Biden touted his record to the gathering of high-profile supporters and took a few swings at the GOP front-runner, former President Donald Trump.
“You’re the reason,” Biden told the crowd — co-hosted by such folks as former L.A. mayoral candidate and entrepreneur Rick Caruso and former Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco — “that Donald Trump is a former president, or he hates when I say it, a defeated president.”
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Rhetoric swapped between the two leaders has grown increasingly bitter in the past few days, with Trump declaring Biden as “the destroyer of American democracy” this week. At Friday’s event, Biden declared: “The greatest threat Trump poses is to our democracy, because if we lost that, we lose everything.”
“I’m the only thing standing between you and Lenny Kravitz,” Biden joked before yielding the stage for a performance by the veteran rocker.
Meanwhile, throngs of pro-Palestinian protesters gathered not far away to challenge the U.S. government’s support of Israel amid the Jewish state’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza. By mid-afternoon, law enforcement had cordoned off a large portion of the park’s open space – restricting access to the side of the street where Biden’s event was expected to get underway – long before the majority of protesters arrived.
As the crowd grew in size, so did tensions – as protesters pounded on cars and blocked some of the roads that led to the site of the Biden fundraiser, chanting “No more genocide” among other things.
Across from the Sinai Temple, someone sprayed “Free Gaza” on the wall of an apartment building. Some residents inside threw objects at the crowd. pic.twitter.com/A0t6zO0jrz
— Emily Holshouser (@emilyytayylor) December 9, 2023
Biden began his West Coast tour in Las Vegas on Friday afternoon, where he touted his administration’s efforts to bolster U.S. infrastructure. A planned high-speed rail line between Las Vegas and Rancho Cucamonga snagged a Biden administration pledge of $3 billion to help start laying track, elected officials said.
Meanwhile, Jill Biden visited Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on Friday to tour research laboratories as part of the White House Initiative on Women’s Health Research. She toured the Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center and Smidt Heart Institute, the White House said.
The Associated Press reported that the couple would attend six different meetings around the L.A. area between the two of them.
This weekend’s events are aimed at helping Biden reach a fundraising target of roughly $67 million for the fourth quarter of the year, according to a source close to the president’s campaign who spoke to the Associated Press but insisted on anonymity to discuss internal numbers.
Campaign events were expected to draw a throng of musicians, movie stars and moguls.
Costos, a former HBO executive who was President Barack Obama’s ambassador to Spain, hosted Friday’s event at his home. Costos’ partner, Smith, is a celebrity interior designer who helped redesign the Oval Office during the Obama administration. The shindig had already pulled in over $8 million early in the day, a person familiar with the matter, who insisted on anonymity to discuss internal campaign details, told the Associated Press.
“It’s time everyone mobilizes themselves and their communities and networks,” Costos said.
Co-hosts included Jim Gianopulos, former chairman of Paramount Pictures; Wendy Schmidt, wife of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; and Bob Tuttle, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom under Republican President George W. Bush, with his wife, Maria Hummer Tuttle.
Other co-hosts included Rick Caruso, in tandem with Pelosi. “I already count the evening a success—not just because of the amount of money it will raise, but because it’s bringing together diverse Angelenos who share the same love of our nation and concern for its future,” Caruso said in a statement. “I’ve never seen a time when America’s leadership carries more significance. In 2024, Americans have a critical choice to make.”
During Biden’s first L.A. stop, pro-Palestinian protesters were on hand in big numbers to get the president’s attention.
The protest was organized by Palestinian Youth Movement, comprised of Palestinian and Arabs living in the U.S. and Canada, according to its website. Other activist groups, including Code Pink and and the Los Angeles chapter of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, were also scheduled to participate in the demonstration, according to a news release.
The Los Angeles Police Department said it was aware of “First Amendment events” in the area over the weekend and was coordinating with the U.S. Secret Service to “ensure the highest level of public safety,” in a Friday social media statement.
“The Department will continue to work with any protest organizers to facilitate lawful demonstrations while protecting the safety of all involved including surrounding communities,” the LAPD said. “Violence of any kind will not be tolerated.”
Word on any public events set for Saturday were not yet announced by the White House on Friday. The Associated Press, however, reported that Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks, would host an additional fundraising gathering for Biden during the presidential visit. Details on that event were scant.
“The pent-up excitement, enthusiasm is really unprecedented,” said Katzenberg, a longtime Democratic presidential fundraiser, who is one of the Biden campaign’s national co-chairs. “People are excited. They’re mobilized. And they’ve been waiting months to show their support for him.”
Not surprisingly, Republican Party officials condemned Biden’s fundraising swing.
“Today, Biden will listen to the concerns of Hollywood elitists instead of ordinary Californians suffering a violent crime epidemic, increased cost of living and Gavin Newsom’s record $68 billion deficit,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Ben Petersen said in a statement. “No wonder Biden is dragging down Democrats in competitive House races.”
California Republican Party Chairwoman Jessica Millan Patterson said in a statement that Biden’s approval level in California is at “record lows.”
“It seems even deep-blue California can’t get behind his disastrous agenda of high inflation, open borders, weak foreign policy, failing schools, and rampant crime,” Patterson said. “No amount of time spent rubbing elbows with Hollywood elites while bragging about the imaginary merits of ‘Bidenomics’ will change the fact that Joe Biden’s presidency is an abject failure.”
Biden has also been collecting cash on the East Coast. He flew to Boston on Tuesday for a trio of gatherings to raise money, including one that featured singer-songwriter James Taylor, and attended a high-dollar event on Wednesday at a hotel near the White House.
Biden has another fundraiser scheduled for Monday in Philadelphia that is expected to feature Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who has been mentioned as a potential post-2024 presidential candidate, and is also planning an upcoming Maryland reception with Democratic Gov. Wes Moore, 45, a key voice in Biden’s campaign for young voters.
Raising money on both coasts could quiet some donors who have privately grumbled that the president hasn’t done enough to stock his campaign coffers ahead of a 2024 race that is likely to be hard-fought and close.
Pool reporter S.V. Dáte from Huffpost, Southern California News Group staff writers Kristy Hutchings and Christina Merino, City News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
