Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama met for private “secret” meals to discuss strategy as the highly contested 2024 election approaches.
The political pair have been having meetings, between just the two of them, as concerns over Donald Trump’s potential victory in November have creeped into reality, New York Magazine reported.
The former president’s “anxiety about the election is real,” a friend of Obama’s told the outlet. The source clarified his nerves are related to the general divisions of the country, not to his former vice president or Biden re-election campaign specifically.
Biden and Obama have long appeared to be a united front, but behind the scenes, the former president was not convinced that Biden’s 2020 run was the right move, the magazine wrote.
However, he came around, becoming a key surrogate for the Biden team. Obama convinced some of his former advisers-turned-Biden campaign staffers to “quintuple their digital budget,” organized a troop of tech moguls to help with Biden’s “online operations,” and even persuaded director Steven Spielberg to help produce Biden’s convention programming, New York Magazine reported.
When Biden decided to run for re-election, his team initially did not want to rely on his former boss as much — but that tune changed when the threat of a second Trump term reemerged as a real possibility.
In a December 2023, lunch at the White House, first reported by theWashington Post, Obama became “animated” when discussing Trump’s potential return.
At the meeting, the ex-president also underscored the need for Biden’s top political advisers to relocate from the White House to crucial spots, such as his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware, and battleground states, according to the magazine.
The 44th president has made his support for Biden known in recent months, often appearing in recent campaign events promoting Biden.
Just this month, Obama — alongside George Clooney and Julia Roberts — headlined a glitzy Biden fundraiser in Los Angeles, raising $30 million — breaking his own record for the amount of cash raised by a Democratic candidate. The LA fundraiser eclipsed his previous record in March, when Obama and fellow former Democratic president Bill Clinton teamed up for a re-election fundraiser in New York. The former president has also promoted Biden in a number of video ads.
Perhaps Obama’s influence is helping Biden’s poll numbers. The president took the lead over Trump for the first time in a Fox News poll since October. Biden is polling at 50 percent compared to Trump’s 48 percent.
The news of the secret strategy meetings comes as Biden and Trump plan to go head-to-head in the first debate of the 2024 general election on Thursday evening.
