POLITICS

Joe Biden to woo donors in Trump's Palm Beach neighborhood on Jan. 30

The president will be in Palm Beach and Miami for campaign fundraisers, according to Biden-Harris 2024 spokesman.

Antonio Fins
Palm Beach Post

President Joe Biden will be courting campaign contributions in Donald J. Trump's neighborhood this coming Tuesday.

The president will be in Palm Beach and Miami for campaign fundraisers, according to Biden-Harris 2024 spokesman.

No further details were immediately available.

The visit comes as Biden ramps up his 2024 re-election campaign efforts, and as it becomes increasingly likely that his GOP rival will be his White House predecessor, Trump.

The president has been pounding away at campaign themes this month, including a call for reproductive rights, warnings about the threat he says a second Trump presidency would pose to the nation's democracy and touting this week's surprisingly strong economic statistics.

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President Joe Biden waves to the audience during a speaking engagement in Wisconsin on Jan. 25.

But the president is not the only 2024 candidate courting donors in Palm Beach next week.

Trump's GOP rival, Nikki Haley, is scheduled to be there on Jan. 31 for a fundraiser as well.

Biden was last in South Florida in the days before the November 2022 midterm elections.

Last Biden trip to Florida proved pretty memorable for state politics

During that visit, he spoke to a crowd of about 100 seniors in Hallandale Beach, the first of three stops in that tour.

Biden touted the then-just-passed Inflation Reduction Act that allows Medicare to negotiate lower pharmaceutical prices. He particularly chided Florida's Republican U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio, who sought to repeal the law, and Rick Scott.

Biden singled out Scott, who earlier that year unveiled a proposal that would abolish all federal programs that are not reapproved by Congress every five years. The president said the measure put a target on Social Security and Medicare.

"A senator from Florida going after Social Security and Medicare? I tell you, look, it's so outrageous, you might even — you might not even believe it. " he said, adding of congressional Republicans overall: "Who the hell do these guys think they are?"

Last year, Biden alluded to the proposal in the State of the Union Address without naming Scott. Nonetheless, it put the state's junior senator in the unwanted glare of the national attention.

Scott vehemently decried Biden for, the senator said, lying about this plan. But Scott ultimately back-pedaled on his plan by carving out Social Security, Medicare, the Veterans Administration and national defense from the proposal.

This is a developing story. Check back for details.

Antonio Fins is a politics and business editor at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach him at afins@pbpost.comHelp support our journalism. Subscribe today.