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Actor George Clooney wasn’t the only Democrat who became worried about President Joe Biden after a swanky fundraiser at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles last month.
Just two weeks before the June 27 debate that set off a crisis within the Democratic party, a “frail” Biden tripped over his words at the star-studded event even as it raised more than $30 million for his campaign coffers.
Jon Favreau, a speechwriter in the Obama White House and Pod Save America co-host, told The Washington Post: “I said to my wife, either he’ll do great at the debate, and we’ll realize he was just tired tonight, or he’ll perform like this and then the whole country will be talking about it.”
He added that Biden “was slow, halting, and hard to follow.”
A number of donors told the paper the president appeared slow and frail, his words trailing off during small talk with attendees as he greeted them to take photos, at times speaking too silently to be heard.
The debate confirmed the worries of many voters and donors that Biden was not the same man who appeared on the stage next to Donald Trump four years previously. But the reporting now also casts doubt on why some didn’t speak out sooner.
Biden had arrived in Los Angeles from Italy that same morning, meeting with donors and other allies for more than two hours before joining former President Barack Obama and talk show host Jimmy Kimmel on stage for an event that lasted about 36 minutes.
Attendees told The Post that the president at times didn’t make sense and frequently struggled to speak clearly.
“It felt like he was still the smart, witty guy we’ve all followed for many years, but the volume and speed are turned way down — to an alarming level,” one backer who donated $100,000 told the paper, adding that Biden appeared to miss a joke shared with Obama as they prepared for a photo. She said Biden later tried to respond “in a barely audible voice” after the photo had been taken and others had moved along.
A Biden campaign spokesperson noted toThe Post that “Several reporters were present for the President’s interview with Jimmy Kimmel at the L.A. fundraiser. None of them reported out anything like this at the time.”
The anonymous donor told the paper that she “struggled to answer them honestly,” when friends asked about Biden’s state.
“We were worried that if we told the truth, that President Biden was stiff, slow and dare we say it, fragile, that we risked losing their support for the president,” she said, adding that “It was painful to be deceptive. Now, we realize we were not alone in withholding what we experienced.”
Access to the most exclusive parts of the fundraiser, such as the photo line, reception, and the after party, cost attendees $500,000, according to The Los Angeles Times. The cheapest ticket cost $250.
In an op-ed in The New York Times on Wednesday, Clooney wrote, “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
One Democratic lawmaker who attended the soiree told The Post: “I’ve been with him. I know what to expect,” adding that “It’s hard to think he’s our best chance to beat Trump.”
