On Friday night, Joe Biden attended the Gun Control Summit in West Hartford, Conn., to give his usual pro-gun control talking points and ramble on about how people are gonna die if we don’t do something, blah blah blah. But it looks like Biden’s true purpose for going to Connecticut may not have been to speak on gun control.
Biden, of course, did give a speech at the summit. He bragged that he is responsible for this or that, quoted his dad with what was likely a completely made-up statement, called for a ban on AF-15 style guns, repeated debunked statistics about the 1994 assault weapons ban, reiterated how important these efforts all are, yada, yada, yada.
When he was finished, he made up an excuse not to have to mingle with the crowd, making it very clear he had to bail out quickly.
“Now, as you — some of you know, I’d usually come down and say hi to all of you. They tell me there’s a storm coming in. Is that right? It’s still — is that still the deal?” Biden asked his handlers at the end of speech.
The audience shouted, “No.”
“If that’s the truth, now, don’t make a lie,” Biden said with a laugh. “As that — as that scene in the John Wayne movie, ‘Don’t make me a dog-faced, lying pony soldier.'” Then he said to the audience, “All right, well, I tell you what — here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to ask the White House photographer to come up. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to stand — I can’t, I usually shake everybody’s hand — but I’m going to stand in front of each section. No, I really mean it. And then — and if you can see the camera, they can see you. And it’s the least consequential part of this whole meeting for you, I promise.”
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So, Biden made a point to say he had to bail out on the gun control event because of the weather. But is that really why he left?
It doesn’t look that way. After leaving the summit at the University of Hartford, rather than fly back to Washington, Biden went to a private campaign fundraiser in Greenwich, Conn. According to local news reports, about three dozen supporters attended the exclusive event, which was located at the home of hedge fund founder Stephen F. Mandel. The gathering featured such high-profile guests as Gov. Ned Lamont and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy. At $25,000 per ticket, the event likely helped Biden raise close to a million dollars for his reelection campaign.
So Biden didn’t leave West Hartford to avoid bad weather so much as he left to raise money for his campaign. I’m starting to think that’s the real reason for his entire trip to Connecticut.
Ah, but there’s more to this story.
The gun control summit took place at the Lincoln Theater on the University of Hartford campus, a curiously small venue for an event featuring the president of the United States. I know because I’ve been in it, and it is adjacent to the campus apartment building I lived in during my senior year at UHart. The Hartford Courant confirmed that the venue was chosen “long before Biden was confirmed as the main attraction.”
In fact, the University of Hartford only confirmed Biden’s attendance mere days prior to the summit, well after attendance for the event had already reached capacity. As an alumnus of the University, I saw the announcement when it went up on social media.
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All these factors have me suspecting that the Greenwich fundraiser was the primary reason Biden went to Connecticut in the first place. So why speak at the gun control event at all? Because attending the summit was the perfect pretext for putting the taxpayers on the hook for at least some of the expenses involved in the trip. Barack Obama did this repeatedly while running for reelection — coordinating campaign fundraisers with official presidential visits, reducing the amount of money his campaign had to reimburse the government to raise money for his reelection.
“Official presidential travel has traditionally been paid for by taxpayers as part of executive branch operations, while political trips and events are to be covered by a candidate’s campaign committee. On the occasions that they mix, the costs are to be split,” ABC News noted back in 2012.
It’s doubtful it was a mere coincidence that Biden had a gun control summit to attend the same day as a lucrative campaign fundraiser nearby.
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