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A Hollywood fund-raiser Saturday evening supposed to bolster President Biden’s conflict chest changed into a platform for a number of the most concerted and hardest assaults up to now on former President Donald J. Trump by the Biden marketing campaign, as entertainers, Barack Obama and even Jill Biden assailed Mr. Trump’s ethics and his suitability to return to the White Home.
Ms. Biden, after being launched by Barbra Streisand, stated the selection was between her husband, “who honors the rule of regulation as a substitute of attempting to bend it to his manner,” and Mr. Trump, “who wakes up each morning caring about one individual and one individual solely: himself.”
“Mr. Trump has advised us repeatedly why he needs the White Home — to provide himself absolute energy, to not be held accountable for his felony motion,” Ms. Biden continued. His goal, she advised the group, “was to destroy the democratic safeguards that stand in his manner.”
Mr. Obama invoked Mr. Trump’s felony convictions — one thing that Mr. Biden has for essentially the most half averted doing — to applause from the group.
“We have now the spectacle of the nominee of one of many two main events sitting in courtroom and being convicted by a jury of his friends on 34 counts,” Mr. Obama stated. Itemizing off a collection of what he described as offenses by Mr. Trump, he famous that “you might have his group being prosecuted for not paying taxes. Put aside all the opposite stuff he says —”
President Biden picked up his microphone: “He paid none.”
The tenor of the occasion in downtown Los Angeles was completely different from one other star-studded fund-raiser simply three months in the past at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor. The shift got here after Mr. Trump was convicted by a New York jury on Might 30 of 34 felony counts of falsifying enterprise data, a verdict that produced a surge of contributions from his supporters that narrowed the fund-raising hole between the 2 candidates and raised considerations amongst Democrats throughout the nation, nowhere greater than in Los Angeles.
It additionally added a twist to a reasonably commonplace political occasion in Hollywood: Democratic candidates exhibiting as much as accumulate cash from the closely Democratic leisure neighborhood.
George Clooney was there. So had been Julia Roberts and Jimmy Kimmel, who requested Mr. Biden if the nation had “Trump amnesia,” evaluating these 4 years to “a colonoscopy” that individuals need to neglect.
“Keep in mind the pandemic,” Mr. Biden responded. “He stated simply don’t fear, simply inject a bit bleach.”
The occasion, on the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, dwelling to the annual Emmy Awards, helped to boost a minimum of $28 million, his aides stated, eclipsing the $26 million that the president drew three months in the past on the fund-raiser at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor.
The tone was set early on, when Ms. Streisand launched the primary girl.
“She’s the neighbor everybody needs they’ve, not the sort that instantly flies an American flag the other way up,” Ms. Streisand stated to laughter and some groans, referring to how Martha-Ann Alito, the spouse of Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., had flown an American flag the other way up — a logo related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on the Capitol — exterior the couple’s dwelling in Virginia.
The change within the political setting was one purpose for the completely different tenor of the night. One other was Mr. Kimmel, who provided far edgier — and main — questions than Stephen Colbert, the late-night speak present host who questioned Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and Invoice Clinton on the Radio Metropolis Music Corridor occasion.
“You probably did say you had been combating to revive the soul of America, and these days it does look like we’d want an exorcism,” Mr. Kimmel stated on the prime of this system, turning to Mr. Biden. “Is that why you visited the pope?”
“Uh,” Mr. Biden stated, chuckling softly. “Yeah.”
When Mr. Kimmel talked about the repeal of Roe v. Wade that Trump-appointed justices on the Supreme Court docket helped orchestrate, the viewers hissed. “Don’t hiss, vote!” Mr. Obama stated.
Mr. Biden stated that “the subsequent president is more likely to have two extra Supreme Court docket nominees,” including, referring to Mr. Trump, “The concept that if he’s re-elected, he’s going to nominate two extra who’re waving flags the other way up, is —” He trailed off.
“The Supreme Court docket has by no means been as out of kilter as it’s at this time,” Mr. Biden stated.
He reminded the viewers of the occasions of Jan. 6 and that Mr. Trump has these days used apocalyptic phrases like “blood bathtub” and “retribution.”
Outdoors the theater complicated on Olympic Boulevard, a line of black-clad police in helmets stood guard as about 100 protesters — sporting T-shirts studying “Stop-Hearth Now” and carrying indicators saying “Cease the Gaza Murder” — shouted at arriving visitors. “There may be blood in your palms!” they stated.
“Persons are stepping into to fund Biden’s re-election marketing campaign whereas he’s arming Israel and funding a genocide in opposition to the individuals in Palestine,” stated one of many demonstrators, Jodie Evans, 70, a political activist and documentary producer who lives within the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles.
The occasion got here amid unease about Mr. Biden’s strengths as a candidate in opposition to Mr. Trump, particularly after the previous president’s latest spike in fund-raising.
“Listening to in regards to the cash made us nervous,” stated David Mandel, the tv showrunner who produced “Veep” and who’s a distinguished backer of the Biden marketing campaign. “However it’s not like we had been actually assured and that made us nervous. We’ve been nervous for eight years. So that is nothing new.”
Mr. Mandel disputed comparisons between enterprise leaders writing checks to Mr. Trump and what was on show from the rich leisure trade on Saturday.
“Let me inform you what Julia Roberts and Jimmy Kimmel and Mark Hamill usually are not doing,” he stated. “They aren’t asking Joe Biden to decrease the company tax charge. They aren’t asking Joe Biden to decrease their private earnings tax charge.”
However for all its monetary success — the cash raised set a document for a Democratic fund-raising occasion, Mr. Biden’s marketing campaign stated — the occasion was a reminder of the dangers for politicians once they attempt to combine Washington and Hollywood.
Mr. Biden shared a stage with Mr. Clooney, the actor who had lodged complaints with a White Home official over the president’s criticism of the Worldwide Prison Court docket.
The courtroom had determined to hunt a warrant in opposition to Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu; its protection minister; and three leaders of Hamas for unlawful actions in waging a conflict in Gaza that has led to hundreds of civilian deaths. Mr. Clooney’s spouse, Amal Clooney, is a human rights lawyer who served on an advisory panel that helped conduct the investigation.
Mr. Biden, who departed a gathering of world leaders in Italy on Friday, skipping a farewell dinner to fly throughout 10 time zones to be in Los Angeles, made no point out of the complaints when he thanked supporters throughout his remarks.
The corridor was stuffed with acquainted faces from the world of leisure, led by Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood producer who has change into one in every of Mr. Biden’s prime behind-the-scenes advisers and who’s chairing his 2024 marketing campaign.
It was an evening of mingling between Hollywood royalty and Democratic leaders from Washington to Sacramento. Bryan Lourd and Richard Lovett, who run the Artistic Artists Company, one of the highly effective expertise businesses on the town, posed for footage with Mr. Clooney and Ms. Roberts. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, and Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, had been there, as effectively.
However the stakes had been arguably larger right here than that they had been in New York. Republicans collected $50.5 million at a fund-raiser in Palm Seashore, Fla., in April, after which raised one other $141 million in Might. Tickets on Saturday evening ranged from $250 a seat to $500,000 for a V.I.P. package deal.
Chad Griffin, a Hollywood-based Democratic marketing consultant and a member of the social gathering’s nationwide finance committee, stated the leisure neighborhood was turning out in anticipation of this being “the most costly election cycle in historical past” given the proof of Mr. Trump’s fund-raising success and political help.
“I’ve by no means seen this city extra motivated and extra dedicated to a presidential election,” stated Mr. Griffin, who started his profession in politics working within the Clinton White Home. “And I feel it’s as a result of there’s a transparent understanding about what’s at stake and what it’s going to take to win in November.”
Reid J. Epstein, Brooks Barnes and George Johnston contributed reporting.
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