Megadonors Are Plotting How Best to Change Biden’s Mind

President Joe Biden is hearing calls to withdraw from the presidential race from a new source: major Democratic Party donors.

The New York Times reports that several of the richest contributors to Democrats around the country are trying to use their money to leverage support against Biden staying in the race.

“If you don’t publicly call for Biden to step aside, you are not getting a dime from me,” said Tom Strickler, the founder of Hollywood talent agency WME, to New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich’s team last Thursday. Strickler said he had been planning to financially support seven of the most vulnerable Democratic senators, but would not be doing so because they still backed Biden’s candidacy.

“It’s a message that I’ve encouraged my friends to send as well,” Strickler said. “If you back Biden, you will lose our support. Over and out.”

Strickler is one of the few donors willing to oppose Biden publicly, including Hollywood banker Joe Ravitch. Other high-profile Democratic donors, including Henry Laufer, Marilyn Simmons, and Haim Saban all wouldn’t comment to the Times.

According to the Times, many of these donors, while committed to replacing Biden, aren’t sure about the best way to do so. While Strickler is holding back on donations, others are leery about bringing on a backlash against wealthy elites. They also aren’t sure who to reach out to in Biden’s inner circle, and whether money is even the best means of persuasion.

“I can’t figure out who—if anyone—has influence over this, but donors certainly don’t, regardless of what we do,” said Ravitch. “And to speak out publicly against the president only helps undermine him. It’s a catch-22.”

Prior to Saturday’s assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, several Democrats were calling for Biden to drop out of the race. Those calls had paused after Saturday but now are back in earnest with Representative Adam Schiff becoming the latest to join the movement. Efforts to fast-track Biden’s nomination are also facing a backlash. Biden is now being asked to drop out from multiple sources—but will any of them persuade him?

Starbucks made headlines Tuesday night when social media users pointed out that the coffee company was listed as a corporate sponsor for the Republican National Convention.

“After years of identifying as a progressive employer, Starbucks is now sponsoring the Republican National Convention,” read one since-deleted viral post on X (formerly Twitter).

The Hill picked up the story with the headline “Starbucks sponsors Republican National Convention.” The story has also since been deleted.

In reality, Starbucks was listed as a sponsor for the Milwaukee Host Committee for the RNC, not the RNC itself. Starbucks spokesperson Jaci Anderson clarified that the company had not donated any money to the convention.

“We are not providing a cash sponsorship of any kind,” Anderson said in an email to The New Republic. Instead of financial support, Starbucks is “providing in-kind support directly to the MKE 2024 Host Committee by providing coffee onsite to the first responders who are serving the city during the convention.”

Cops, such as the out-of-town police officers who shot and killed an armed man outside the RNC Tuesday afternoon, can access Starbucks coffee and other beverages at the five RNC venues in Milwaukee.

On the Milwaukee Host Committee’s website, the union-busting company’s logo is pictured next to far-right groups like Turning Point USA, The Heritage Foundation, Rumble, and more.

“The Host Committee is proud to have several partners who are supporting our mission to promote Milwaukee to the world,” Evan Hafenbreadl of the Milwaukee Host Committee said in a statement to The New Republic.

As expressed on its website, the Milwaukee Host Committee is a “nonpartisan entity created to work with the City of Milwaukee in preparing for and successfully producing the Republican National Committee (RNC) convention.”

In its statement, Starbucks clarified that it will provide the same services at the Democratic National Convention next month in Chicago. “Our support of first responders and volunteers at the conventions is an extension of our ongoing commitment to the communities where we operate—which includes Milwaukee and Chicago,” wrote Anderson.

In 2016, Starbucks also provided support for the Republican National Convention in Cleveland by keeping its downtown stores open 24/7 during the event.

Starbucks Workers United had no comment for The New Republic.

The Democratic National Committee is moving ahead with its plan to nominate Joe Biden ahead of Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month—and not everyone is happy about it.

Over the past week, Democrats have fought over the possibility and timeline of a virtual nomination of Biden ahead of the convention, accusing party insiders of trying to “fast-track” a roll-call vote.

It seems as though the Democratic National Committee is sticking to its plan to proceed with a virtual roll call for the nomination, but will operate on a slower timeline than some members of the party feared. The committee said Wednesday that the process will begin no earlier than August 1, though it will end before the Democratic convention starts on August 19. In a letter obtained by Politico, DNC co-chairs Leah Daughtry and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said they will determine exactly how to move forward at a Friday meeting.

“We know that the Republican Party and its affiliated groups, like Project 2025 author The Heritage Foundation, plan on filing all conceivable legal challenges to the Democratic Party’s nominees,” Daughtry and Walz wrote. “Having enough time to finalize our nominees and make sure they are on ballots around the country is critical. That is the driving reason for conducting a virtual voting process.”

The plan for a virtual roll call was introduced in May over concerns that Biden would not be able to appear on Ohio’s ballot thanks to a technical law that has since been changed. But following Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the rushing of the nomination has kicked off infighting in Democratic circles.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is reportedly pushing for the DNC to push its virtual roll call.

Another critical voice is Democratic Representative Lloyd Doggett, who was the first Democratic member of Congress to publicly call for Biden to step down. Doggett warned the DNC Wednesday to drop the idea of a virtual roll call. “My call for President Biden to step aside remains even more urgent,” he said. “Our decision must consider the reality of steadily worsening poll numbers, not just more wishful thinking. The risk of Trump tyranny is so great that we must put forward our strongest nominee.”

Earlier this week, members of Congress, led by Representative Jared Huffman, were circulating a draft letter arguing that Biden’s nomination should take place at the convention, as is standard practice. “There is no legal justification for this extraordinary and unprecedented action which would effectively accelerate the nomination process by nearly a month,” the Democrats warned. Since the letter from the DNC co-chairs, Huffman has said he will not send the letter for now.

Republicans appear to have completely forgone the “unity convention” theme this week in favor of a much more divisive brand: a total call to arms.

In a prerecorded message to the convention Tuesday night, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump insisted that Democrats are “destroying our country,” and once again claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him, urging supporters not to let “what happened” that year happen again.

“We must use every appropriate tool to beat the Democrats,” Trump said. “These people want to cheat, and they do cheat, and frankly it’s the only thing they do well.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump twisted an old lie into something new, trying to convince his base that Democrats are “attempting to interfere” in the 2024 presidential election.

But Trump wasn’t the only Republican stoking the flames. In his own speech, Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise nodded toward a white supremacist, alt-right conspiracy known as the “great replacement theory” while baselessly advancing the idea that “Biden and Harris want illegals to vote.” House Speaker Mike Johnson shared a similar idea, telling the conference that Republicans “cannot allow the many millions of illegal aliens [the Democrats] allowed to cross our borders, to harm our citizens, raid our resources, or disrupt our elections.”

Of course, undocumented immigrants (and any other noncitizens) cannot vote in U.S. elections. But that didn’t stop Texas Senator Ted Cruz—whose state overwhelmingly identifies as Hispanic—from mindlessly hopping on the bandwagon.

“[Illegal immigration] happened because Democrats cynically decided they wanted votes from illegals more than they wanted to protect our children,” Cruz said Tuesday.

Senate candidate Kari Lake, who’s running to represent 2.3 million Latino voters in Arizona, also advanced the bold-faced lie that Democrats “voted to let the millions of people who poured into our country illegally cast a ballot in this upcoming election.”

But few summed up the aggressive mood of the convention better than West Virginia Governor Jim Justice, who told conference-goers on Tuesday that the “bottom line” for Republicans is this: “We become totally unhinged if Donald Trump is not elected in November.”

Donald Trump has one of the most powerful business leaders in his corner—and might make him treasury secretary if elected.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan Chase, is in the running for the Cabinet position after Trump held a meeting with him and more than 70 other top U.S. executives last month that the former president and convicted felon described as a “lovefest.”

“That was a lovefest, and I will tell you when I’m not loved because I feel that better than anybody,” he said.

Trump may have felt loved in that meeting because he promised to lower the corporate tax rate to 20 percent if reelected. As president, Trump was responsible for lowering the rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, a move that was praised by business leaders at the time, including Dimon. The former president told Bloomberg that he would ultimately want to lower it to 15 percent “because that would put us in the absolute lowest in terms of incentive.”

Dimon has inclined himself toward Trump this year after Nikki Haley, whom he previously endorsed, dropped out of the race for president. Dimon has asked Democrats to dial back their criticism of the former president, saying that Trump was in many ways right about the economy. And Trump seems to have reversed his criticism of Dimon as well, after calling the banking CEO a “highly overrated globalist” thanks to his Haley endorsement.

Despite, or perhaps because of his stature in the business world, Dimon’s credibility may be inflated. He has touted disgraced WeWork founder Adam Neumann, his firm paid $290 million to settle a lawsuit over his bank’s funding of Jeffrey Epstein, and JP Morgan Chase has had to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines to the Securities and Exchange Commission during his watch. But as long as he heads a powerful Wall Street firm, he will retain credibility in financial markets, and that is why Trump will want to curry favor with him. Through Dimon, Trump may enjoy support from other CEOs, and will enjoy their financial contributions to his businesses and his campaign. The only question is whether Dimon would want the job.

President Joe Biden no longer appears to have the favor of his own party—let alone the American people.

Nearly two-thirds of registered Democrats—approximately 65 percent—want Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential election, according to a survey released Wednesday by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The poll also found that just 27 percent of Democrats felt “extremely” or “very confident” in the 81-year-old president’s mental acuity and his ability to serve effectively as president.

Nearly two dozen lawmakers have already formally called on the president to exit the race, but many more have quietly signaled similar messaging, including top Democrats such as former Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Still, others are reportedly “not budging” until Biden makes another egregious mistake—though the level of mistake required is aboundingly unclear.

The DNC, meanwhile, has already announced its plans to nominate Biden via a “virtual roll call” vote weeks before the Democratic National Convention in August. The effort was initially pitched as a workaround to an Ohio law that requires party candidates to be nominated 90 days out from Election Day, but the Ohio state legislature passed a law resolving the issue.

House Democrats came out against the preemptive vote, but withdrew a letter of opposition after party leaders changed the nomination date from July to August 1, promising that no voting would happen before then—though it would still take place two weeks prior to the convention.

In the original letter, House Democrats argued that “there is no legal justification” to move the nomination away from the conference date, and slammed the virtual nomination as an opportunity to “[stifle] debate” by “prematurely shutting down any possible change in the Democratic ticket.”

Former Trump lawyer Peter Navarro was released from federal prison Wednesday morning. His first stop? The Republican National Convention.

After serving four months for contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the House January 6 committee, Navarro will be taking a flight from Miami to Milwaukee where he will take the mic on the RNC stage. Navarro is set to speak at 6 p.m. Central time, a person familiar with the schedule told the Associated Press.

During his time in federal prison, Navarro worked as a clerk in the prison law library and lived in the “elder dorm,” according to ABC News. Navarro’s prison consultant, Sam Mangel, told ABC that Navarro was “well respected” in prison and got through his four-month sentence with “surprising grace and fortitude.”

But perhaps four months was not enough time for him to learn his lesson if he’s headed back into the thick of it.

Navarro was the first senior member of Trump’s administration to report to prison for the January 6 insurrection after being sentenced in January. When he reported to prison in March, he called his arrest a “partisan weaponization of the judicial system.”

This line is echoed by Trump and his allies as they face their own legal battles, calling cases against them politically motivated “witch hunts.” In reality, like Trump’s hush-money trial, Navarro was not convicted by the political system or Biden himself but by a jury of his own peers.

Donald Trump is apparently hoping to cash in on his own assassination attempt by once again selling tacky, limited-edition sneakers.

The new, white high-top sneakers feature a decal of Trump with his fist in the air and blood splattered across his face, and the phrase “FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT,” the words the former president shouted as he was pulled off stage by Secret Service agents during his rally in Pennsylvania Saturday.

For only $299, plus shipping costs, Trump’s fans can preorder a way to “honor his unwavering determination and bravery” on their feet.

Within less than a week, Trump’s assassination attempt has brought about a tidal wave of merchandise on demand, rather than a resigned movement for political unity as Trump promised.

The shoe launch also comes in the midst of the Republican National Convention, and the site welcomes visitors from the event in a banner on its home page, warning them that they will only be able to purchase three pairs of shoes each.

Despite the fact that the website explicitly states that its products “are not designed, manufactured, distributed or sold by Donald J. Trump, The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals,” Trump reported owning the company, CIC Ventures LLC, on a 2023 financial disclosure, according to ABC News. The company’s address listed by the Florida Division of Corporations is the same as the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Axios reports.

Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly boosted the website’s products. The former president made a campaign stop at Philadelphia’s Sneaker Con in February to unveil his golden “Never Surrender” high tops, only one day after he and the Trump Organization were ordered to pay $355 million in legal penalties. He’s also offered his gaudy golden kicks as a gift to any donors who shell out at least $2.5 million.

It appears that Trump is in on the assassination merch venture as well, as the site promises that 10 of its limited stock of 5,000 pairs will be signed by the Republican nominee himself.

Steve Bannon is one of the far right’s most well-known and active operators, having been an adviser to Donald Trump and and the editor of Breitbart. Why, then, did he spend months in the homes of Jeffrey Epstein, interviewing the billionaire sex criminal for a documentary?

Business Insider revealed Wednesday that Bannon has hours of footage of Epstein from the financier’s homes in Manhattan and Paris before Epstein died in jail in 2019, supposedly as part of a documentary to be called The Monsters: Epstein’s Life Among the Global Elite.

More than five years later, a small teaser trailer of the film from 2021, showing Bannon arguing with Epstein over his treatment of women, is the only part of it that has been released. It makes little sense, considering that Epstein is vilified in Bannon’s target right-wing audience and that having exclusive footage of the deceased billionaire would likely bring in viewers far beyond that group.

One possibility might be that Bannon wouldn’t be reflected in the best light. Bannon met Epstein in December 2017 after the former stopped working for then-President Trump. During the summer of 2018, Bannon spent a lot of time with Epstein, supposedly for the documentary. But according to associates of the two men, Bannon’s documentary wasn’t serious at all.

These associates told B.I. that the two acted more like friends than adversaries, and Bannon was actually trying to help Epstein with public relations, advising the billionaire on how to handle the legal and journalistic investigations against him. Bannon continued to spend time with Epstein through the next year, when the financier would be arrested on sex-trafficking charges.

Despite the fact that legal cases connected to Epstein are still ongoing, including the criminal sex-trafficking trial of his wife, Ghislaine Maxwell, the rest of the footage has not come to light. Mark Epstein, Jeffrey’s brother, told B.I. in 2023 that he received some of the footage from his brother, but when he asked Bannon about the rest of it, he was rebuffed.

“He told me he had like 16 hours of videotaping with Jeffrey in his vault,” Mark Epstein said. “And he told me it was protected because it was witness preparation and it was protected under attorney-client privilege. But the thing is, Bannon’s not an attorney.”

Bannon himself is currently serving a four-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress after he refused to respond to a subpoena to testify before the House January 6 committee. Is Bannon refusing to release the footage because it would reflect poorly on him in addition to his conviction? Is he worried that it would reflect poorly on Trump, a onetime associate of Epstein who claims to have had a falling out with the financier in the 2000s? It just adds to the many mysteries and conspiracies surrounding Epstein.

Donald Trump’s MAGA followers have become even more sycophantic in the wake of his attempted assassination, with at least one Republican lawmaker outright comparing the convicted felon to Jesus.

During a livestream on Sunday, Representative Lauren Boebert directly compared Trump to Christ on the basis that both had been “canceled,” and her belief that their personal sacrifices “for the people” were identical.

“This censorship, the silencing of those who speak the truth, is nothing new. Cancel culture is nothing new. You cannot cancel who God has called,” Boebert said. “They tried to cancel Jesus. You can’t cancel God.

“Jesus laid down his own life. No one took his life. He laid that down for you and for me, and history repeats itself,” she added.

She’s not the first to draw the comparison, however. Ahead of Trump’s arraignment on hush-money charges last year, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene went out on a limb in claiming that the charges against Trump made him akin to Jesus.

“Trump is joining some of the most incredible people in history being arrested today. Nelson Mandela was arrested, served time in prison,” Greene said at the time. “Jesus! Jesus was arrested and murdered.”

The attack on Trump’s life was a definitive turning point for the conservative party and Trump’s positioning within it. Since the attack, several conservative leaders have hopped onto the messianic bandwagon, though few have been as brazen as Boebert in linking the former president directly to Jesus.

On Sunday, House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that “GOD protected President Trump.” Evangelical minister Franklin Graham told Fox News that Trump was spared by “God’s hand of protection.” From inside prison, former Trump adviser Steve Bannon stated that Trump “wears the armor of God,” and Texas Governor Greg Abbott joined in the overzealous fray, adding that Trump was “truly blessed.”