What to Do in New York City on a Thursday if you Have $500k Spend
Biden attends record breaking fundraiser with celebrities and NY Elites while Trump attends the memorial of NYPD Officer Diller. But Trump will have his own billionaire fundraiser April 6 in Florida.
What do you do on a Thursday night if you are rich and have been brainwashed into believing that the party that uses systems of government to censor its opponents is the protector of Democracy? You go to a star-studded campaign fundraiser, of course.
On Thursday, Biden, along with former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, appeared on the stage of Radio City Music Hall and did a sit-down with Stephen Colbert.
The chat with Colbert was not about policy or issues but an opportunity to perform before attendees by mocking Trump and reminding everyone of the threat he poses to our democracy.
Attendees pay between $250 for nosebleed seats and $500,000 for the best seats, which includes an exclusive afterparty dinner. If you wanted somewhat decent seats and a photo op with the presidents, that would set you back a modest $100,000, which isn’t much in this thriving Biden economy.
The event sold out all 5,000 seats, raising $25 million for Biden’s presidential campaign. Setting a record for most raised for a presidential campaign in a single night.
But if we are going to be honest, Biden would never have been able to attract that kind of cash on his own. Have you seen the campaign events for this man? They are about as packed as a retirement community restaurant after the early bird special has ended.
The crowd was there for the other guys, Rico Suave Obama and Don Juan Willy, along with the other accouterments of the evening, which included Mindy Kaling (you know Kelly from the Office) hosting, Stephen Colbert, of course, doing a hard-hitting sit down with the presidents, and performances by Queen Latifah, Lizzo, Lea Michelle, Ben Platt, and some chick named Cynthia Erivo.
The event also featured House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and First Lady Jill Biden, who also delivered remarks during the event.
After Jeffries asked Schumer, "What are we going to do tonight, Chuck?" Schumer responded, "The same thing we do every night: try to take over the world!"
Ok, kidding, that did not happen. And if you don’t get the reference, don’t tell me because it will make me feel old and hurt my feelings.
However, Schumer did his best to play cheerleader for Biden, touting his various achievements. He reminded everyone that this was not just about winning the Presidency but also an opportunity for Democrats to potentially gain control of all three branches of government if they secure crucial victories in the 2024 elections, which is basically the same plan as Brain's.
"Re-elect Joe Biden as president, put Hakeem Jeffries as Speaker, keep me as Majority Leader, and the next four years will be better than this. You ain't seen nothing yet," the Senate majority leader said.
The first lady, joined by several other members of the Biden family, including Hunter Biden, recalled that after she agreed to marry Mr. Biden, "He said, 'Jill, I promise you, your life will never change.' 'Well, that, of course, turned out to be wildly untrue."
Trump Attends Officer Diller’s Memorial
While Biden was in the heart of Manhattan performing to an audience of rich New Yorkers, while Pro-Palestine protest went on outside Radio City Music Hall. Trump was also in New York for a very different reason.
Trump was invited to attend the memorial service of Officer Johnathan Diller, 31, in Long Island, New York. Diller died last Monday when he was shot and killed during a traffic stop in Queens. He left behind a wife and a one-year-old son.
Diller and his partner stopped a vehicle with two men inside because it was illegally parked at a bus stop. Investigators believe they were casing a nearby T-Mobile store.
When officers asked the individuals to step out of the vehicle, the suspect in the passenger's seat refused and pointed a gun at the officers and shot Officer Diller. His partner returned fire, shooting the shooter in the back.
Diller died at the hospital, and the shooter survived.
The shooter's history includes 21 arrests by the NYPD, with nine being for felony charges. His most recent stint in prison ended in September 2021, when he was released after serving close to five years for the criminal sale of a controlled substance. Prior to this, he had served a three-year sentence for a 2011 assault and was released in October 2014.
The other man had been arrested 14 times before. He was detained for carrying a loaded gun in Far Rockaway on April 17, 2023, which is a second-degree criminal weapon possession charge. He was released on $75,000 bail. He had also served a 10-year sentence for attempted murder and robbery in 2003 and was released in November 2013.
This led many to blame New York’s elected officials and their anti-police policies for the death of Diller. In fact, when New York Governor Kathy Hochel and New York City DA Alivn Brag appeared to attend the memorial, the family turned them away.
Following the memorial, Trump gave brief remarks where he expressed his condolences for Diller's death and commented on the issue of crime and public safety.
"We have to stop it. We have to stop it," Trump said. "We have to get back to law and order. We have to do a lot of things differently, because this is not working."
Meanwhile, in Manhattan…
A Night to Remember with Biden
Mindy Kaling, hosting the evening event, welcomed attendees and reminded everyone how fabulous and rich many in the room were, "It is such a big night. It is an honor to be in a room with so many rich people. People are paying up to $500 thousand dollars to be here tonight."
When the time finally came for the main event, Biden, Obama, and Clinton made their grand entrance, rising on a platform from below the stage to a grand round of applause. This choice of entrance could be showmanship, symbolism for Biden’s rising from the ashes and into a second presidency, or the most effective way to prevent Biden from tripping or wandering on the stage. I will leave it to you to decide.
The "conversation" with Colbert, along with his two wingmen, allowed Biden to tout what he perceives as his accomplishments while mocking and jacking jabs at Trump without carrying the full weight of the event. Which I am sure was all part of the plan.
Scenes from the Evening at Radio City Music Hall
Biden takes a swing at Trump’s age
Colbert: "Since the State of the Union, President Biden, you've been busy. You've been in Raleigh, Saginaw, Milwaukee, Phoenix, Vegas. Hotlanta, the Philly suburbs, Dallas, Houston. Donald Trump, as far as we can tell, has just been trying to win a third championship at his own golf course. My question to you, sir, is: Can voters trust a presidential candidate who has not won a single Trump International Golf Club trophy? At long last, sir, have you no chip shot?"
Biden: "Look, I’d be happy to play. I told him this once before when he came into the Oval before he was sworn in. I said, ‘I’ll give you three strokes, but you carry your own bag.'"
Colbert takes a dig at Trump’s legal problems
Colbert: "Mr. Presidents, thank you so much for joining me this evening. This is an especially exciting and rare occasion. Three presidents have all come to New York, and not one of them is here to appear in court."
Obama on Republicans
Obama:"We’ve got not just a nominee, but frankly a party and an entire infrastructure that increasingly seems unconcerned with the essence of America"
Biden on Israel
Biden: "It's understandable there's such a profound anger, and Hamas is still there, but we must, in fact, stop the effort resulting in significant deaths of innocent civilians, particularly children."
Biden Recycles Trusted Lies
Following a question from Colbert asking what is at stake this election, Biden dipped into his repertoire of false messaging, disinformation, and flat-out lies about Trump and pulled out two of his favorites.
Let’s look at just two of his favorites:
Abortion
"This guy wants to get rid of not only Roe v. Wade, which he brags about having done, he wants to get rid of the ability of anyone anywhere in America to have the right to choose. All the things he’s doing are so old. A little old and out of shape."
I will give Biden where credit is due. He finally acknowledges his age by taking a jab at himself and Trump. I clear campaign shift after a long time of running away from the fact of his old age.
What is not true is this claim that Trump "wants to get rid of the ability of anyone anywhere in America" to murder their unborn child. Early on during the primaries, Trump criticized DeSantis for passing a six-week abortion ban in Florida. Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that Trump told advisers and allies that he likes the idea of a 16-week national abortion ban with three exceptions, in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.
This is in line with what Trump said earlier this week to New York City WABC radio show "Sid & Friends in the Morning," that he was likely to back a 15-week federal ban on abortion, with exceptions for rape, incest, and life-threatening emergencies.
"The number of weeks, now, people are agreeing on 15, and I’m thinking in terms of that, and it’ll come out to something that’s very reasonable," he said. "But people are really — even hard-liners are agreeing, seems to be 15 weeks, seems to be a number that people are agreeing at. But I'll make that announcement at the appropriate time."
He also mentioned that he believes individual states should regulate abortion and pointed out to anti-abortion supporters seeking earlier pregnancy bans that "you have to win elections."
Charlottesville
"I wasn’t going to run in 2020 because I just lost my son Beau a little earlier. And until I watched what happened down in Virginia, when those folks came out of the fields, carrying torches and Nazi flags, and accompanied by white supremacists, and a young woman was killed, a bystander. And when the former president was asked what he thought of that, he said, 'There are very fine people on both sides.'"
Biden and many on the left love to cite this misrepresentation, and they use their common tactic of removing context. This is very easy to do with Trump because he isn’t the best communicator.
Trump: "Excuse me, they didn’t put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group – excuse me, excuse me, I saw the same pictures you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."
This is the quote that is always pointed to. I think Biden especially loves to point to this because it allows him to cosplay as a civil rights activist, a claim he has falsely made before in the past.
Trump: "I’m not talking about the neo-Nazis and white nationalists because they should be condemned totally."
The truth is that Trump actually differentiated between neo-Nazis, whom he condemned, and those who were there protesting the removal of a Confederate statue and pointing out the concern of when do the calls for removal stop? Will there be calls to remove the statues of America’s forefathers like Washington and Jefferson? Trump must have been looking into the future because, in October 2021, the New York City Council removed a statue of Jefferson from its halls because he was a slave owner.
I am well aware that Trump, too, loves to bend the truth, and I have my issues with him. However, he doesn’t do it while simultaneously gaslighting you into believing he is morally superior or virtuously defending democracy while repeatedly taking a dump on the Constitution. Not to mention, Biden ran on a message of unity while continuing to push lies that feed into division.
Biden’s Record-Breaking Fundraiser
There is no question that the Biden-Harris campaign had a successful night. It broke fundraising records and raised $25 million in a single night, dwarfing the $20 million raised by the Trump campaign in the whole month of February.
As of late March, Mr. Biden's campaign committees held over twice as much in funds as Trump's counterparts, with Mr. Biden's teams amassing $155 million compared to Trump's $74 million.
Biden's campaign co-chair boldly jokes the Trump campaign’s money challenges pointing out that Trump has to spend campaign funds on legal bills.
"Unlike our opponent, every dollar we're raising is going to reach the voters who will decide this election — communicating the President's historic record, his vision for the future and laying plain the stakes of this election," said Biden-Harris campaign co-chair and Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg.
One might think that these legal challenges are strategically intended to deplete Trump's financial reserves amid his presidential campaign.
Trump Hopes to Break Records, Too
Trump, ever the competitor who hates losing, also plans a record-breaking fundraiser. Billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson will host a fundraiser in Florida on April 6, with a goal of raising up to $33 million.
According to Trump's campaign, admission to the event will cost $250,000, but many donors are pledging the full amount of $814,600. The donations will be divided between Trump’s campaign, the Republican National Convention, and a leadership political action committee that helps with his legal fees.
Sugar magnate Jose Fanjul, real estate powerhouses Howard Lutnick and Steve Witkoff, megadonors Rebekah and Bob Mercer, and business executives Todd Ricketts and Warren Stephens are also expected to attend.
Several other prominent Republican billionaire donors, such as Nelson Peltz, hospitality mogul Steve Wynn, Tesla and SpaceX's entrepreneur Elon Musk, and ex-Marvel Chairman Isaac Perlmutter, are getting back into the mix with Trump. Earlier this month, these four individuals met with Trump for breakfast at Peltz's Palm Beach estate.
Boy would I love to be a fly on the wall at this event.
Conclusion
Thursday vividly illustrated the clash between electoral politics' glamour and celebrity with the harshness of actual tragedies. While Trump attended the funeral of a fallen NYPD officer, Biden mingled with the elite in the warm light of Radio City Music Hall.
The star-studded event also exposes Biden's vulnerability. He is dependent on mass clout and celebrity to bring in 5,000 attendees and raise $25 million in one night. He would not be able to bring in that type of crowd on his own, and he definitely cannot fill stadiums with supporters or campaign at a grassroots level. He is too old. He simply does not have the energy or the draw, and he can’t hide in the basement again.
I predict there will be little to no sincere interaction with voters for the Biden-Harris campaign. The event, filled with famous faces and exorbitant entry fees, showcased that influence, wealth, status, and celebrity are expected to do the heavy lifting from Biden's campaign, not Biden himself.
Meanwhile, Trump's presence at Officer Diller's memorial served as a stark contrast, emphasizing the connection and understanding that his supporters believe Trump has to the societal issues that many voters live with daily.
The Biden administration, on the other hand, is playing the same game of gaslighting on crime as they have on the economy. We know you are struggling and suffering but hey things are getting better, look at this graph.
Following the fundraiser, the Biden-Harris campaign happily bragged about its record-breaking fundraiser while also quipping about Trump's financial struggles due to his legal issues, a particularly petting and disturbing display, considering they are attacking and mocking an opponent for a situation your side is exacerbating.
In less than a week, the success of Trump's fundraiser with billionaires will significantly affect messaging and the election itself. Trump needs them to "show him the money," all potentially $33 million, because he is currently fighting a multi-front battle in the courtroom and on the campaign trail, which is a significant drain on the campaign.
Also, I cannot wait to see how the MSM covers the event. I'll be back with that after April 6.