Biden Goes Straight From G7 to Hollywood Fundraiser, Balancing Geopolitics With his Reelection Bid

Flying through the night across nine time zones, from southern Italy to Southern California, President Joe Biden will shift focus from Russia's challenge of Western unity to raking in big bucks for his reelection campaign at a Hollywood fundraiser featuring George Clooney and Julia Roberts.
Biden went straight from the Group of Seven summit of wealthy democracies, where Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine took center stage, to Los Angeles and the glitzy gathering unfolding Saturday night at the Peacock Theater. The journey was only broken up by a layover to refuel outside Washington, said The Associated Press on Saturday.
Former President Barack Obama is joining the megastar headliners Clooney and Roberts, and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel will interview all of them onstage. In a text message to donors beforehand, Roberts called it “a crucial time in the election.” Kimmel wrote in his own text that presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump “will hate this, so let’s do it.”
Top luminaries from the entertainment world have increasingly lined up to help Biden's campaign, hoping to provide a fundraising jolt and to energize would-be supporters to turn out ahead of Election Day against Trump.
But hobnobbing with the megastars this time means Biden is skipping a summit in Switzerland about ways to end Russia’s war in Ukraine. It's a stark reminder that his responsibilities as president and his reelection effort can sometimes conflict.
“We are going to see an unprecedented and record-setting turnout from the media and entertainment world,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul, major Democratic donor and co-chair of Biden’s campaign, said in a statement.
A Biden fundraiser in March at Radio City Music Hall, on the other side of the country in Manhattan, featured late-night host Stephen Colbert interviewing the president, Obama and former President Bill Clinton. It raised a then-record-setting $26 million. The Biden campaign says it is still counting receipts ahead of Saturday's event and likely won't release an expected total until closer to when it starts.
Trump has hauled in even bigger numbers.
He outpaced Biden's New York event in April, raking in $50.5 million at a gathering of major donors at the Florida home of billionaire investor John Paulson. The former president’s campaign and the Republican National Committee announced they had raised a whopping $141 million in May, padded by tens of millions of dollars in contributions that flowed in after Trump's guilty verdict in his criminal hush money trial.
That post-conviction bump came after Trump and the Republican Party announced collecting $76 million in April, far exceeding Biden and the Democrats’ $51 million for the month and narrowing a fundraising advantage Biden built earlier in the race.
The money race aside, Biden missing the Ukraine summit means Vice President Kamala Harris is being deployed for her own whirlwind trip — leaving Washington for Switzerland and dashing back in a little more than 24 hours.
At a joint appearance with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the G7 summit, Biden said Harris would be a strong representative of the US in Switzerland. But Zelenskyy previously suggested that Biden’s not attending was “not a strong decision.”
“I would want President Biden to be personally present,” he said late last month, predicting that Putin would “stand and applaud” Biden not coming. Putin and Russian representatives also aren't going to the summit.
In another sign of his day job colliding with his political aims, Biden's fundraiser was expected to attract protests from pro-Palestinian activists angry about his administration's handling of Israel's war against Hamas in Gaza.
Such demonstrations have become common wherever Biden goes in recent months, including outside his Radio City Music Hall fundraiser.

An aide to President Vladimir Putin accused the West on Friday of trying to isolate Russia's European exclave of Kaliningrad as much as possible by restricting the supply of goods to it by road and rail.

Kaliningrad, an exclave on the Baltic coast sandwiched between NATO and European Union members Lithuania and Poland, is home to Russia's Baltic Fleet. EU sanctions imposed on Moscow over its war in Ukraine ban the transport of certain goods there.

Nikolai Patrushev, an adviser to Putin known for his hawkish views on the West, visited Kaliningrad on Friday where he complained that 80% of goods which he said were essential for the exclave could not be brought by land.

"The countries of the West are trying to complicate cargo and passenger transit to Kaliningrad to the maximum extent in order to isolate the Kaliningrad region and to disrupt transport links with the main territory of Russia," the state TASS news agency quoted Patrushev as saying.

He was quoted as saying Russia had been forced to supply the exclave with much of what it needed by sea, including on a ferry which operates between Kaliningrad and a port in the Leningrad region.

Work was underway to move the transit of diesel fuel, cement, and other materials to a specialized tanker fleet, he added, while two rail and road ferries were being built to try to improve transport links.

Those vessels were due to be completed in 2028, Patrushev was quoted as saying by TASS.

Biden Goes Straight From G7 to Hollywood Fundraiser, Balancing Geopolitics With his Reelection Bid