President Barack Obama briefly emerges from his golf and fine dining-filled vacation Monday to raise campaign cash for Hillary Clinton, boosting the Democratic presidential nominee for an afternoon before returning again to a week of relaxation.
The fundraiser, held in the same forested town on Martha’s Vineyard where Obama and his family are renting a secluded compound, is set to bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars for the candidate’s campaign.
Obama will deliver remarks to 60 donors, who each paid between $10,000 and $33,400 to attend, and answer some of their questions. It will be his first chance to respond to a host of campaign trail dust-ups, including Republican nominee Donald Trump’s assertion that he is a “founder” of ISIS.
Before he departed for his two-week stay on Martha’s Vineyard, Obama declared Trump unfit for the presidency. He’s expected to spend much of the fall stumping for Clinton.
Monday’s event is hosted by Hank Goldberg, a real estate investor, and his wife Carol Brown Goldberg, a mixed-media artist. Land records show the couple actually own two homes in Chilmark on abutting lots. Each is valued at more than $4 million.
The Goldbergs were originally slated to host a fundraiser with Obama at their enormous condo in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in May. But the White House determined the time it would take to drive there from Washington, even in a motorcade, would occupy too much of the President’s day. Instead they tried switching the venue to the Jefferson Hotel (a frequent fundraising spot for Obama only two blocks from the White House). But the Goldbergs weren’t interested.
The details of the deliberations were revealed in hacked Democratic National Committee emails that were posted by Wikileaks, including some salty language from DNC staffers miffed at losing out on what they expected to be a high-yield event.
“They really won’t come down 20 minutes?” one staffer wrote. “Thats f**k**g stupid.”
“He really won’t go up 20 minutes for $350k?” another staffer responded. “THAT’S f**k**g stupid.”
“Or he is the president of the united states with a pretty big day job,” was the terse reply.