Priorities. 

President Biden is leaving the G7 summit a day early because he has a celebrity-filled fundraiser to attend in California. He is skipping out on a Ukraine peace summit in Switzerland. 

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to represent the United States in Switzerland. My first response was heaven help us. Who knows what kind of nonsense she will say or agree to? 

It's not a lot different than having Biden there, I suppose. The optics are bad, though. Biden is the president, at least for now. Biden's big claim to success was agreeing with other G7 members to give Ukraine billions of dollars in support of their war efforts against Putin. 

So, it's strange that Biden makes the big announcement of saddling America with a 10-year commitment to Ukraine, along with our G7 allies, and then skipping the peace summit. But, again, maybe not. Does Biden really contribute anything to these summits? His brain is mostly mush at this point because of the dementia. I don't say that to be cruel. It's the truth, we can all see him failing. We have eyes and ears. 

It seems to me that a fully functioning president would want to be involved in the peace summit. He would want to have his ideas heard by other world leaders involved in supporting Ukraine. America used to take the lead in world affairs. That doesn't happen with this administration. Biden leads from behind. He doesn't set the agenda. 

He's off to California for a big, celebrity-packed fundraiser on Saturday. The hosts include George Clooney and Julia Roberts. President Zelensky asked Biden to skip it and go to Switzerland for the peace summit but Biden is sticking with his Hollywood pals. Who could blame Zelensky for asking Biden to stay when he knows Kamala is going to fill in? 

This is where I get a strong chill up my spine when I realize that this is part of Kamala's on-the-job training. There is no way that Joe Biden will survive another 4-year term in office. If Biden is re-elected, we will get President Kamala. If that doesn't make voters jump off the couch and go vote, I don't know what will. Biden is certainly bad enough but Kamala would be even worse.

This decision is a double-edged sword for Biden. He chooses a political fundraiser for his re-election over a peace summit. Yet, this is how the game is played. Politicians have to raise money. 

The top-ticket package costs $500,000. 

Jessica Levinson, an election law professor at Loyola Law School, said that it is a trade-off. For the majority of American voters, at a time when 60% of Americans say they are living paycheck to paycheck, this will look tone-deaf. Biden is having a let them eat cake moment. 

“The concern is that he looks out of touch with where Americans are with respect to how much you could ever pay to attend a high-dollar dinner when a lot of people are suffering to put food on table, and during an international crisis where he's arguably out of step with many Democrats,” she said. “On the flip side, this is what politicians do. We’ve created a system where you need to raise big-dollar amounts to be competitive, and he would be a lunatic to unilaterally disarm. Even though he has the name recognition and has absolutely been introduced to the American public, it would be political suicide to give up big-dollar fundraising.”

It would be awkward for Biden to skip this fundraiser because of Clooney's involvement. Recently it was reported that Clooney called the White House to complain about Biden's criticism of the ICC's decision to go forth with prosecuting Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu for war crimes during the Israel-Hamas war. Clooney's wife, Amal, is a human rights lawyer who was of counsel to the ICC in making that decision. 

Biden is not particularly popular with the Hollywood crowd. He's a Democrat, though, so they support him. Biden has to keep them happy to get their money. That's what this boils down to. Never mind doing the job he wants a second term to do.