Donors’ cash is drying up, Katzenberg warns Biden in private meeting

Joe Biden met privately in Las Vegas Wednesday with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the film producer and a top campaign adviser, who conveyed a warning: The president’s donors’ patience is wearing thin, and their cash soon will, too.

Katzenberg, one of Biden’s closest counselors and a conduit to moneyed circles in media and finance, told the president that major donors, doubtful of his ability to win in November, have all but stopped writing the kind of big checks that sustain campaigns in the home stretch, people familiar with the meeting said. One of the people said the donor warning came in a broader discussion of other campaign topics.

After this story was published, Katzenberg said in a statement that it was a “misread of a private meeting” and that he and Biden “talked about everything from the convention to new ads. And by the way, we will raise the money we need to run a winning campaign.”

Democratic donors have been privately wringing their hands for weeks, but it had been unclear until now whether their concerns had made it to a president whose inner circle has shrunk as calls for him to drop out have grown louder.

The Biden campaign had $240 million on hand at the end of the second quarter, versus Trump’s $285 million, and that was before the debate kicked off concerns about his ability to run and win.

“This I can confirm,” James Carville, a veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns including Bill Clinton and a respected voice among donors, told Semafor. “Donors in revolt.”

The freeze extends beyond Biden’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee to the web of super PACs and outside groups that make up the party’s infrastructure.

“It’s a crisis,” said a top Democratic fundraiser. “The money isn’t moving.”

Katzenberg directed Semafor’s questions to the Biden campaign, which declined to comment.

Biden’s loudest critics have come from Hollywood, not from the Democratic Party’s other coastal donor base on Wall Street. After George Clooney’s op-ed in the New York Times, actors Rob Reiner and Michael Douglas, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel all expressed concern about the president’s chances. (“We are in fuck city,” Emanuel said earlier this month at the Aspen Ideas Festival).

Biden’s campaign isn’t at immediate risk of running out of cash. But the final months of presidential races are dominated by expensive television campaigns in swing states — made all the more necessary by Biden’s inability to communicate regularly himself. That will only be exacerbated by the president testing positive for Covid on Wednesday.

Money, rather than polling or political support, is typically the trigger for a campaign’s death spiral. Now Biden is edging toward the brink.

• “Hollywood turns its angry eyes on Jeffrey Katzenberg.” — The Hollywood Reporter