David Letterman has never been one to follow the crowd, and the same appears to be true of his politics. While dozens of high-ranking Democrats and Hollywood A-Listers have been calling upon Joe Biden to step aside as the 2024 presidential candidate, Letterman instead seems to be doubling down on his support of the current president.
As CBS News reports, the late-night legend—whose My Next Guest Needs No Introduction episode with John Mulaney just earned an Emmy nod—will be headlining a fundraiser in Martha’s Vineyard for Biden on Monday, July 29, with both the president and First Lady in attendance. The event is being co-hosted by Hawaii governor Josh Green, and will be held at a private residence in Vineyard Haven. Letterman himself owns a home on Martha’s Vineyard, as do Barack and Michelle Obama and Bill and Hillary Clinton (though exactly who will be in attendance is not yet known).
News of the fundraiser was announced late last week by the Vineyard Gazette, which wrote that “the event is part of the Biden Victory Fund as President Biden makes his bid for a second term later this year” and that invites to the event would hinge on donations of $2,500 to $25,000. The gathering is reportedly one of at least 10 fundraising events Biden plans to personally attend by the end of this month—all of this news coming as the president recovers from a bout with COVID and ongoing calls for him to drop out of the election following his disastrous debate with Donald Trump.
While Trump guested on Letterman’s late-night shows more than 30 times over the years, the former Late Night host has made his opinion of the 45th president clear. In 2019, Letterman told The Hollywood Reporter: “[Trump] used to be kind of like the boob of New York that pretended to be wealthy, or we thought was wealthy, and now he’s just a psychotic. Is that putting too fine a point on it?”
In the wake of Biden and Trump’s first of two planned debates, Stephen Colbert—who helped raise a record $26 million for Biden’s re-election campaign in March—stopped just short of calling on the president to drop out. Jon Stewart—who hosted a live episode of The Daily Show immediately following the debate—had a similar response, and called for a “stress test” of Biden’s future presidency.
