Jeffrey Katzenberg Tells Joe Biden That Donor Cash Is Drying Up As Concerns About POTUS’ Age Grow

By Dominic Patten, Ted Johnson

July 17, 2024 4:04pm

Joe Biden heard some very hard words today from Jeffrey Katzenberg about his reelection chances.

The longtime Democratic donor and fundraiser spoke with Biden today in Las Vegas before the announcement that POTUS had Covid again, we can confirm. In a larger meeting about finances, Katzenberg laid out to the 81-year-old President how donors are drying up due to ongoing concerns about his age. The campaign co-chair supposedly told Biden that the road ahead to another term could be very difficult, sources tell us. 

Katzenberg did not respond to request for comment from Deadline on the meeting. 

Already, a number of Hollywood donors and key supporters have called on Biden to withdraw from the campaign, amid concerns that there is a path to victory following the president’s dismal debate performance last month.

Most prominent was George Clooney who, in a New York Times op ed last week, called for Biden to drop out of the race. He wrote that “our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign.” Clooney co-hosted a fundraiser in Los Angeles for the campaign on June 15, and the event raised more than $30 million, a record. But Clooney wrote that “it’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Damon Lindelo, another prominent Hollywood donor, wrote in a Deadline essay that the industry should withhold its money from the party until the top of the ticket is changed.

Semafor first reported on the meeting.