Stars, war: Biden attends A-list bash at George Lucas’ LA mansion after ordering latest strikes on Iranian-backed Houthi rebels to avenge the deaths of three US soldiers

President Joe Biden swung by George Lucas’ $32 million Bel Air mansion Saturday night to court Democratic supporters who were in town for the Grammys.

Biden arrived in Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon and headed straight for the 9,000-square-foot, 9-bedroom, 8-bath home in a private, gated community. Jill Biden, who traveled with her husband to the West Coast, swung by to attend her own event with supporters.

Biden was reported to be meeting with black entertainment executives. Lucas’ wife Mellody Hobson is CEO of Ariel Investments and Chairman of Starbucks Corporation. She is the former chairman of DreamWorks Animation.

The president’s meeting comes as polls show the president’s support among black voters is falling and as Donald Trump looks set to finish off the Republican presidential nomination.

And that comes after The US and UK hit 36 ​​Houthi targets in Yemen on Saturday in a second wave of strikes. to further disable Iran-backed proxy militias.

Biden is on a three-day West Coast trip focusing on his re-election bid. He heads to Las Vegas on Sunday for events there. It’s his third round of political visits this week — on Tuesday he was in Florida for a fundraiser and on Thursday he went to Detroit to speak with union workers.

Many of the attendees at his meeting in Los Angeles are in town for Sunday’s Grammy ceremony.

The Biden campaign will run a campaign ad during the Grammys that will focus on Biden’s support for abortion rights, which Democrats are pushing as a massive issue in the 2024 election.

The Bidens won’t attend the music awards — although Jill Biden did last year — but will talk to industry leaders about the issues at stake in the election and how they can use their platforms to mobilize voters, Deadline reported.

Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars franchise, and Hobson bought the house in 2017 from a company associated with Texas billionaire oilman Ross Perot. They paid $33.9 million for the home, which was built in 1929. It has a swimming pool, fountains and a putting green.

Hobson’s name was at one point in the running for Treasury Secretary when some black lawmakers wanted an African-American candidate. Biden eventually nominated Janet Yellen. Hobson, a black billionaire businesswoman, donated to Biden’s 2020 campaign.

Biden’s declining support among black voters is one of many red flags Democrats have waved as polls show a 2024 rematch between Trump and Biden is essentially a tie.

After Trump won the New Hampshire primary, the Biden campaign declared that he had essentially locked up the Republican nomination and has focused their firepower on the former president.

Some Democrats worry that Biden is not tough enough on his Republican foe as his campaign focuses on hiring staff — especially in key states — and boosting its massive campaign coffers.

Key White House staffers — including Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mitch Landrieu and Mike Donilon — have moved over to the campaign. O’Malley Dillon was campaign manager for Biden’s successful 2020 run.

Biden raised more than $97 million in the last three months of last year for his re-election campaign.

Trump, meanwhile, is bleeding money out of his PAC in the form of legal fees.

Donald Trump’s Save America leadership PAC and Make America Great Again PAC spent $56 million on legal fees last year, a figure that includes $30 million in the latter half of the year.

The president still has vulnerabilities that worry loyalists. In addition to his age – at 81, he is the oldest American president ever – a USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll last month showed he has the support of only 63% of black voters, a group he carried at a whopping 87% in 2020.

Biden has stepped up his efforts, including trips to South Carolina, whose black voters gave him his first primary victory in the 2020 contest. He easily won the state’s Democratic primary on Saturday with 97% of the vote, but faced only token opposition.

Before heading to the West Coast on Saturday, he and Jill Biden formally opened his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del.

During his remarks, Biden rallied his team and said Trump behaved even worse than he did in the 2020 campaign.

‘The guy we’re running against is not for anything, he’s against everything. And no, I mean it, it’s the weirdest campaign I’ve ever been involved in, it’s even worse in terms of his behavior than the last time in 2020, Biden said.

“This is more of a mission,” he told them. ‘We cannot lose this campaign. For the good of the country’.

“It’s way beyond me, it’s the best in the country,” he said.

The entire Democratic ticket was in Wilmington to mark the official opening of their 2024 campaign headquarters.

Vice President Kamala Harris and fellow gentleman Doug Emhoff flew up from Washington DC to join the Bidens in speaking with staff.

Meanwhile, on Sunday, Biden will be in Las Vegas for political events. Biden’s stop comes as Nevada wraps up early voting for the presidential primary. Election day for the primary election is Tuesday, February 6.

He will talk to voters in the historic west side of the city about what is at stake in the election, his campaign said.

The LA swing will be the Bidens’ first trip to the region since December, when they were in town for a fundraising swing.

His fundraisers during the three-day swing were packed with celebrities, including Steven Spielberg, Barbra Streisand, Shonda Rhimes, Rob Reiner and David Geffen.

President Biden has only mild opposition to the Democratic nomination, and most of the funds he raised will be used for the general election.

Biden’s focus on the campaign trail has been on Trump. He has made the defense of democracy a central element of his re-election bid and has repeatedly said that Trump threatens the principles on which the country was founded.