New book details Biden campaign's 11th hour karaoke party before he dropped out
Former President Biden's campaign aides were "pissin' the night away" less than 72 hours before he exited the White House race last year, according to a new book, which details how they were belting out hits at a karaoke night just ahead of the historic political earthquake.
Biden staffers gathered at his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., for a karaoke night last July, just before he dropped out of the presidential race, according to "Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House," a book by The Hill's Amie Parnes and NBC News's Jonathan Allen, released Tuesday.
The event, held as Biden was battling the coronavirus, was meant as a way to boost staff morale and to keep his "team engaged during the dark weeks" that followed a disastrous debate performance against President Trump.
"What better way to wash away the week, the campaign leadership thought, than to get boozy and belt out the Beastie Boys?"
Among the songs that accompanied a night of imbibing? The 1997 tune by Chumbawumba, "Tubthumping."
"Sipping cheap wine, beer, and hard seltzers to wash down mouthfuls of pizza, the youngsters reveled in watching their bosses try to match the bars of a Gen X anthem released before most of the singers were born," the book recounts.
The night, one aide told the authors, felt like "karaoke at the end of the world," which is also the name of the book's chapter that describes the sad singalong session.
"Fight" also offers insight into Jeffrey Katzenberg's attempt to stop George Clooney's op-ed, which called on Biden to withdraw from White House race following the debate and a shaky Los Angeles fundraiser.
In his New York Times piece, the "Ocean's Eleven" star said Democrats were "not going to win in November with this president."
Katzenberg, a Hollywood mega-producer and one of the Biden campaign's national co-chairs, was given a copy of Clooney's op-ed as a courtesy a day or two before it was published in the paper, Parnes and Allen wrote.
"Katzenberg had tried to stop Clooney by himself and failed. By the time Biden aides caught wind of it, the Times already had the op-ed in hand," the book said.
A Biden adviser called the actor's opinion piece "a drone strike at Biden's front door."
Less than two weeks after Clooney's op-ed published, Biden announced he was abandoning his presidential bid and backed his vice president, Kamala Harris.
—Updated at 2:35 p.m. EDT