Biden holds Los Angeles fund-raiser as Trump courts Michigan

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US President Joe Biden disembarking Air Force One  in Los Angeles, California, on June 15.

US President Joe Biden disembarking Air Force One in Los Angeles, California, on June 15.

PHOTO: REUTERS

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US President Joe Biden brushed aside the jet lag on June 15, flying straight from the Group of Seven (G-7) summit in Italy to Los Angeles for a star-studded event raising millions of dollars for his election fight against Donald Trump in November.

The President was joined by Mr Barack Obama, the previous Democratic commander-in-chief, at an event which included remarks by actors Julia Roberts and George Clooney, as well as singing icon Barbra Streisand.

Despite the presence of the Hollywood heavyweights, Mr Biden turned serious when he spoke of his rival Trump, and how whoever wins the election will likely have at least two new Supreme Court nominations to make.

“The idea that if he’s re-elected, he’s going to appoint two more flying flags upside down,” Mr Biden said, referring to recent tumult over a conservative sitting justice who was confirmed to have had an inverted American flag – a symbol of Trump’s false election-fraud claims – raised outside his home in 2021.

Trump – making an unprecedented bid to win back the White House while running as a convicted felon – was also on the campaign trail, boasting in Detroit, Michigan, that his own fund-raising is “the highest in the history of politics”.

Michigan is a must-win state for Mr Biden in November’s electoral mathematics.

Aiming to eat into Mr Biden’s key electoral support from African-Americans there, Trump visited a Black church in Detroit and told hundreds of voters that “crooked Joe Biden has done nothing for you except talk”.

Trump then headed to a starkly different venue: a convention of high-profile hard-right Republicans and supporters of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

At the Turning Point USA convention, he railed against Mr Biden’s climate protection package and mocked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a “salesman”.

He also renewed his incendiary rhetoric about what he branded the “Biden migrant invasion”, saying he will stop it with the biggest deportation operation in American history.

In a characteristically rambling 80-minute speech – frequently interrupted by loud cheering – Trump claimed that help for migrants leaves US war veterans “lying in the streets”, and veered into everything from extended complaints about modern showers to repeating his lie that his 2020 election loss was “rigged and stolen”.

“We have a rigged country. We have rigged elections, we have open borders,” he said.

Glitz

Mr Biden, meanwhile, is hoping to inject star power and hard cash into his battle.

Hollywood stars joined Mr Obama for the gala evening that Mr Biden’s campaign says has already raised US$28 million (S$37 million).

“It’s the largest Democratic fund-raiser ever,” Clooney said.

Outside the fund-raiser, groups of chanting protesters were kept away by a phalanx of police in riot gear.

Mr Obama meanwhile took the stage with Mr Biden, his former vice-president, for a conversation moderated by late-night US comic Jimmy Kimmel.

“We have someone to worry about,” Mr Obama told donors, referring to Trump.

“And there’s a whole agenda that we should be concerned about. But we can take pride in affirming the extraordinary work that Joe has done.”

Mr Biden’s turn with the stars means he skipped

a huge international peace conference for Ukraine

in Switzerland on June 15, with Vice-President Kamala Harris attending instead.

The glitz marked a change for 81-year-old Mr Biden after a recent run of gruelling foreign travel and geopolitics focused on the grinding conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza.

At the Group of Seven rich nations summit in Puglia, Mr Biden helped seal a deal for

a US$50 billion loan for Ukraine

using frozen Russian assets, and

signed a 10-year security accord

with President Zelensky.

The week before he was in Normandy, France, for

the 80th anniversary of the World War II D-Day landings.

Mr Biden was accompanied on arrival in Los Angeles by relatives, including daughter Ashley and granddaughters Maisy and Naomi.

The show of family support comes at a difficult time for Mr Biden, following

the conviction of his son Hunter

on gun charges.

Fund-raising battle

Mr Biden’s switch to US electioneering also marks the start of a more intense phase ahead of November’s knife-edge election.

Polls show that Mr Biden and Trump are largely neck and neck, with many voters turned off by a rematch between the oldest president in US history and a 78-year-old convicted felon.

They have been in a fund-raising battle too, with Mr Biden raking in more for months but Trump doing better recently as supporters rally over

the guilty verdict in his porn-star hush money trial.

The two are also gearing up for the

first blockbuster debate of the presidential campaign

in less than two weeks.

The Democrat is expected to go on the offensive on issues like abortion and democracy where his campaign thinks Trump is vulnerable.

But he will also be preparing for how to deal with full-frontal personal attacks by the former reality-TV show host. AFP

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