President Joe Biden stopped by George Lucas’ $32 million Bel Air mansion on Saturday evening to woo Democratic supporters who were in town for the Grammys.
Biden arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon and headed straight to the 9,000-square-foot, 9-bedroom, 8-bath home in a private, gated community. Jill Biden, who traveled to the West Coast with her husband, left to go to her own event with supporters.
Biden reportedly met with black entertainment leaders. Lucas’ wife Mellody Hobson is the CEO of Ariel Investments and the chairman of Starbucks Corporation. She is the former chairman of DreamWorks Animation.
The president’s meeting comes as polls show the president’s support among black voters waning and Donald Trump appears to be finalizing the Republican presidential nomination.
And it comes after the The United States and Britain hit 36 Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in a second wave of targeted attacks to further eliminate Iranian-backed proxy militias.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden are greeted by (from left) Senator Alex Padilla, his son Diego Cruz Padilla and Representative Maxine Waters after arriving in Los Angeles
President Biden meets with entertainment leaders at the Bel Air home of George Lucas and Mellody Hobson (see above in 2016)
Biden is on a three-day trip to the West Coast focused on his re-election bid. He goes to Las Vegas on Sunday for events there. It’s his third round of political visits this week: On Tuesday he was in Florida for fundraising and on Thursday he went to Detroit to speak to auto union workers.
Many of the attendees for his Los Angeles rally are in town for Sunday’s Grammys ceremony.
The Biden campaign will run a campaign ad at the Grammys that will focus on Biden’s support for abortion rights, which Democrats are raising as a major issue in the 2024 election.
The Bidens will not attend the music awards ceremony — although Jill Biden did attend last year — but will talk to industry leaders about the issues at stake in the election and how they can use their platforms to to mobilize voters, Deadline reported.
Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars franchise, and Hobson bought the house in 2017 from a company linked to Texas billionaire oilman Ross Perot. They paid $33.9 million for the house, which was built in 1929. It features a swimming pool, fountains and a putting green.
Hobson’s name was in the running for treasury secretary at one point, when some black lawmakers wanted an African-American candidate. Biden ultimately nominated Janet Yellen. Hobson, a black billionaire businesswoman, donated to Biden’s 2020 campaign.
Biden’s declining support among black voters is one of many red flags being waved by Democrats as polls show a Trump-Biden rematch in 2024 is essentially a draw.
After Trump won the New Hampshire primary, the Biden campaign declared that he had essentially blocked the Republican nomination and focused their firepower on the former president.
Some Democrats fear Biden is not being tough enough on his Republican nemesis as his campaign focuses on hiring — especially in key states — and boosting its massive campaign coffers.
Key White House staffers — including Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mitch Landrieu and Mike Donilon — have moved on to the campaign. O’Malley Dillon was the campaign manager for Biden’s successful 2020 run.
Biden raised more than $97 million for his re-election campaign in the last three months of last year.
Trump, meanwhile, is hemorrhaging money from his PAC in the form of legal fees.
Donald Trump’s Save America Leadership PAC and the Make America Great Again PAC spent $56 million on legal fees last year, a figure that includes $30 million in the last half of the year.
The president still has vulnerabilities that worry loyalists. In addition to his age – at 81 years old he is the oldest American ever elected president – a USA TODAY/Suffolk University survey last month showed he has the support of just 63% of black voters, a group he carried by as many as 87% in 2020.
Biden has stepped up his efforts, including making trips to South Carolina, where Black voters gave him his first primary victory in the 2020 election. He easily won Saturday’s Democratic primary with 97% of the vote, but faced only token opposition.
President Joe Biden visited his campaign staff in Wilmington
President Joe Biden speaks with campaign staff as first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff listen
Before heading to the West Coast on Saturday, he and Jill Biden formally opened his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del.
During his remarks, Biden rallied his team and said Trump behaved even worse than in the 2020 campaign.
“The man we’re up against, he’s not for anything, he’s against everything. And no, I’m serious, it’s the weirdest campaign I’ve ever been a part of, it’s even worse in terms of its behavior than the last time in 2020,” Biden said.
“This is more of a mission,” he told them. ‘We cannot lose this campaign. For the good of the country.”
“It’s way beyond me, it’s in the best interest of the country,” he said.
The entire Democratic ticket was in Wilmington for the official opening of their 2024 campaign headquarters.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Second Gen. Doug Emhoff flew from Washington, D.C., to meet the Bidens to speak to staff.
Meanwhile, President Biden will be in Las Vegas on Sunday for political events. Biden’s stop comes as Nevada completes early voting for the presidential primaries. Election day for the primaries is Tuesday, February 6.
He will speak to voters in the city’s Historic Westside section about what’s at stake in the election, his campaign said.
The LA swing will be the Bidens’ first trip to the region since December, when they were in town for a fundraiser.
First lady Jill Biden wears a pin in support of her husband, President Joe Biden, during a visit to the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington
Vice President Kamala Harris addresses campaign staff in Wilmington as President Biden listens
James Costos (center) posted a photo of the fundraiser he hosted at his Los Angeles home in the fourth quarter of 2023 with (from left) first lady Jill Biden, President Joe Biden, Speaker Emeritus Nancy Pelosi and Costos’ partner Michael Smith on the Bidens’ latest visit to LA
His fundraisers during that three-day swing were filled with celebrities, including Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Shonda Rhimes, Rob Reiner and David Geffen.
President Biden faces only mild opposition to the Democratic nomination and most of the money raised will be used for the general election.
Biden’s focus on the campaign trail was on Trump. He has made defending democracy a central part of his re-election campaign and has repeatedly said Trump threatens the principles on which the country was founded.
