By Frank Kamuntu
It’s not every day you see more than one president in the same place — and it’s especially rare to see three. So when Presidents Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton joined forces at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on Thursday evening for a conversation with late-night host Stephen Colbert, it’s no surprise that big things happened.
“An Evening with the Presidents” — which was hosted by Mindy Kaling and featured musical guests Lizzo, Queen Latifah, Ben Platt, Cynthia Erivo and Lea Michele — set a national fundraising record even before the program began, bringing in an estimated $25 million for the Biden Victory Fund, which aims to help President Biden win reelection in November.
Tickets for the event ranged from $225 on the low end to as high as $500,000 with all the VIP perks. To get a photo with all three commanders-in-chief at the event, guests were looking at a $100,000 price tag.
Biden, Obama and Clinton comprise half of all living U.S. presidents. The other Democrat in the group — 99-year-old Jimmy Carter — has been in hospice care for more than a year, and while Republican George W. Bush is on good terms with his liberal counterparts, he would be an unusual guest to find at an explicitly Democratic fundraiser.
Donald Trump, meanwhile, also passed through New York City on Thursday for unrelated reasons, and attended the wake of a slain police officer on Long Island hours before Biden’s fundraiser began.
As election season heats up, Trump finds himself bogged down by a host of civil and criminal cases that have led to steep fines and numerous court appearances. The former president’s first criminal trial is slated to begin in Manhattan on April 15, centered around 34 felony counts related to alleged hush money payments.
Though Trump is polling stronger than many predicted when he first entered the race in 2022, he faces a major cash disadvantage compared to Biden that will only be exacerbated by Thursday’s star-studded event.
