Joe Biden Tells Jeffrey Katzenberg, Byron Allen & Hollywood Fundraiser That America Is “Sick & Tired” Of Donald Trump
Just over a month after Donald Trump was in town for a pricey Beverly Hills fundraiser, Joe Biden tonight told a deep-pocketed Hollywood crowd in the same neighborhood that the time for change is here.
“I promise you if we elect a Democrat this time — I predict to you whether it’s me or someone else – but I guarantee you if it’s me, what’s gonna happen is, we’re going to see this country come together like it hasn’t in a long time,” the ex-Vice-President said at the $2,500 to $10,000 a ticket event at the home of Barack Obama’s former Ambassador to Spain and HBO executive James Costos and his partner and ex-White House interior designer Michael Smith.
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In his third bid for the Oval Office, tonight’s function was the first Tinseltown fundraiser for Biden, who was a frequent visitor to the Hollywood ATM when he was Obama’s second-in-command and for last year’s midterms.
Hitting the unity theme hard and the current President harder by inference in front of a 300-strong audience that included co-hosts Jeffrey Katzenberg, ICM Partners’ Chris Silbermann, CAA’s Craig Gering, Rob Reiner and spouse Michelle, plus mogul Byron Allen, former California Senator Barbra Boxer, Legion’s Aubrey Plaza, Sony’s Eric Paquette and his screenwriter spouse Jessica Postigo, Tom Ford, UTA Communications boss Seth Oster and ex-William Morris CEO Jim Wiatt, Oval Office hopeful Biden swore the Trump administration was an aberration in American history.
“Because people are tired, they’re sick and tired of what’s happening,” the candidate declared. “Let’s lift our heads up. Again, not a joke, remember who the hell we are. And let’s go take it back.”
With a scattering of protestors outside chanting against Richard Blum, fundraiser co-host, investment banker and husband of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the outside shindig at Costos and Smith’s saw the duo introduce Biden to the small stage that had been set up with American flags on it. Throwing West Coast red meat to the assembled, Costos announced that two of the reasons he was backing his old boss’ right hand man was that Biden was an early supporter of marriage equity and the protection of intellectual property, the latter a major bottom line issue for Hollywood.
In his approximately 20-minute speech, Biden touched on a number of topics, such as working to help the middle class, that have been a common theme for him the past several months and more so since he jumped into the field of more than 20 Democrats vying for the party’s nomination in late April. Currently the frontrunner, the ex-Veep revealed that a dozen of those at Costos and Smith’s on Wednesday night had urged him to take on Trump.
“You don’t have a choice: run,” Biden recounted being told, “this is not about you.” The seasoned and self-deprecating politician added to laughs that he responded to the “run Joe run” conversations with a “Thank you very much.”
Biden also said, as he has repeatedly of late, that the racist display and fatal violence he saw in 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia, pushed him to get off the bench and enter the race for the Presidency.
Less than a year before the potentially important California primary, Biden will be followed in parachutes int L.A. in the next few weeks by fellow Democrats Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Cali’s junior Senator Kamala Harris and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker with their hats in hand looking for cash.
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