Obama and Clinton aim to support Biden without overshadowing him at a celebrity-filled fundraising event

NEW YORK CITY — Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton increased the wattage of the spotlight shone on President Joe Biden Thursday during a high-dollar, high-stakes fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

But Biden’s predecessors appeared to remember their responsibility as Democrats to the party and underscored the incumbent’s record, as opposed to their own, before what is expected to be a close general election against former President Donald Trump this November.

Obama and Clinton delivered an ardent defense of Biden’s response to the Israel–Hamas war as the current president insists the United States needs to provide more food and supplies to Palestinians in Gaza, but that the country must not forget Israel experienced a massacre.

Obama described Biden as having “moral clarity” and a willingness to listen to all sides of the debate in order to find common ground. Clinton added that Biden’s care for Palestinians and acknowledgement of their right to self-determination is why Democrats should vote for him in November.

The defense suggested the deep rift among Democrats that Biden is attempting to bridge on the war as he runs for a second term in the White House. He easily secured the delegates needed to be the party’s standard-bearer once again but faced protest votes in several pivotal primary states.

However, the event also included moments of levity. “By the way, Dark Brandon is real,” Biden said, alluding to a pro-Biden meme, as all three presidents put on his trademark aviator sunglasses.

Biden holds a considerable cash advantage over Trump before November, with Thursday’s fundraiser raising more than $26 million, but there are reasons beyond bringing in more dollars for his campaign to organize the event. Namely, attempting to counter an apparent enthusiasm gap within the president’s own Democratic Party regarding his reelection bid.

“At the end of the day, what you want, not just out of your president but out of your government, is people whose values are rooted in wanting to make sure everybody gets a shot. That is willing to fight on behalf of people who weren’t born into privilege. And that’s who Joe Biden is,” Obama said at the fundraiser. “At the end of the day, you do have to make a choice, and the question then becomes: Who is it that really sees you and cares about you? I can — I’m pretty confident the other guy doesn’t. This guy does.”

The event presented a risk for Biden that he would be overshadowed by two popular former presidents as he tries to navigate among the lowest approval ratings of an incumbent at this time in his presidency.

But the Biden campaign is hoping the public display of unity with Obama and Clinton will remind voters what is at stake this November in the rematch with Trump, indirectly addressing concerns about Biden’s age, stewardship of the economy, and approach to the wars in both Gaza and Ukraine. The former president was not mentioned by name at the event.

Leon Panetta, an Obama and Clinton administration alumnus, reiterated that Biden had nothing to lose and everything to gain by sharing the stage with his predecessors.

“That picture is worth a hell of a lot in politics today,” Panetta said in a statement.

Biden has been hemorrhaging support from black, Latino, and young voters, all critical legs of his winning 2020 coalition, since his inauguration. The president still leads Trump among those demographics, but even a slight decrease in his vote share could cost him battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Simultaneously, hundreds of protesters, many of them pro-Palestinian demonstrators, descended on Radio City Music Hall Thursday with signs that read “Day 174 of U.S. funded genocide” and “Israel bombs=U.S.A. pays.”

Protesters even interrupted the fundraiser, with one shouting, “You’re out of your f***ing minds,” while being removed from the premises. 

“You can’t just talk and not listen,” Obama replied. “That’s what the other side does.”

Nevertheless, Biden campaign officials told the Washington Examiner that they believed Thursday’s fundraiser, in particular, would draw a sharp contrast with the fraught relationship between the Republican Party and Trump, who has spent the past eight years remaking the GOP in his own image and appealing to donors to help him pay the legal fees and penalties stemming from more than 90 federal indictments.

The fundraiser, which brought in a crowd of more than 5,000 supporters, also featured people familiar with a spotlight not cast by politics. Actress Mindy Kaling hosted the event, comedian Stephen Colbert moderated a conversation between the trio of presidents, and musicians Lizzo, Queen Latifah, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo, and Lea Michele performed for their guests.

Kaling opened the program with a quip that it was nice to be in a room with “so many rich people” and that, compared to Biden, Obama, and Clinton, she looked like a “cast member on Euphoria,” an HBO TV series about teenagers.

“The reason we are here is to reelect President Joe Biden,” Kaling said, adding that she was backing Biden for her two children.

The general public was permitted into Thursday’s fundraiser, with ticket prices starting at $250, though attendees paid up to $500,000 for VIP access to one of the event’s sideline receptions and after-party. People could also hand over $100,000 for a photo with the presidents taken by photographer Annie Leibovitz.

Despite Democratic anxiety related to Biden’s campaign, the president has had no problem fundraising since announcing his 2024 bid in the spring of 2023. The Biden campaign announced this month that it had raised more than $50 million in February and closed the month with more than $150 million cash on hand, a roughly $100 million edge over Trump.

Trump himself was also in New York on Thursday for the Long Island wake of Jonathan Diller, a New York City police officer who was shot and killed during a recent, routine traffic stop in Queens.

“The police are the greatest people we have. There’s nothing and there’s nobody like them. And this should never happen,” Trump said after the wake, trying to tie Diller’s death to Biden. “We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently. This is not working. This is happening too often.”

Earlier in the day, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre sought to blame the Trump administration a spike in national crime.

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“Violent crime surged under the previous administration,” she told reporters traveling with Biden to New York City. “The Biden-Harris administration have done the polar opposite, taking decisive action from the very beginning to fund the police and achieving a historic reduction in crime.”