Ari Emanuel Tells Megyn Kelly Jeffrey Katzenberg Oversold His Sway With Biden

Hollywood super-agent Ari Emanuel told Megyn Kelly on Friday that Jeffrey Katzenberg kept saying he had the president's ear as Biden's candidacy fell apart but never used it.

Emanuel is the CEO of TKO and a Democrat whose brother Rahm Emanuel was Barack Obama's White House chief of staff. He is promoting his new memoir, Roll the Calls, which Knopf published on September 22. On The Megyn Kelly Show, he said he had seen Biden's decline coming well before the party did.

"I said it a year beforehand, and Jeffrey was raising money for him, saying exactly what he said about Hillary, about Biden, and he was doing everything he could," Emanuel said.

Ari Emanuel's Account of Jeffrey Katzenberg

Emanuel said Katzenberg offered to set up a meeting with Biden in exchange for a $1 million donation. He turned the offer down, telling Kelly that "at a million dollars, anybody could get me a meeting. I don't need you to do it and take credit."

Once Democrats saw the campaign was in trouble, Emanuel said, Katzenberg "was saying that he had his ear and could do everything." Then, in Emanuel's telling, nothing happened: "He couldn't get him out, didn't get him out, and couldn't get him on the phone or whatever."

Kelly asked whether anyone outside Washington was "more responsible for trying to cover up Joe Biden's mental infirmities" than Katzenberg. Emanuel said "a lot of people" were trying to do it but would not say Katzenberg was the most responsible.

"I think there was a lot of people trying to do it, but I don't know. I just know he kept on saying that he could get me in a room, and he had his ear, and he was working on stuff." — Ari Emanuel

He said Katzenberg "does stuff not for the reason, but for how it reflects on him." Emanuel told Kelly that DreamWorks, under Katzenberg, would not pay for a TV package his agency sold early on, and said many people in Hollywood feel the same way about Katzenberg. Katzenberg was not on the show, so the account is Emanuel's alone.

What the Record Shows About Katzenberg and Biden

Before the debate, Katzenberg arranged White House lunches where skeptical donors could see Biden for themselves. After the debate, some contributors blamed him for putting their concerns to rest, The Boston Globe reported in July 2024.

The public record also complicates Emanuel's claim that Katzenberg did nothing. Katzenberg met Biden privately in Las Vegas on July 17, 2024, and conveyed that major donors had all but stopped writing large checks, Semafor reported. Katzenberg disputed that account at the time, calling it "a misread of a private meeting."

Timeline of Biden's 2024 Exit

• June 27, 2024: Biden's debate performance against Donald Trump in Atlanta is widely panned.
• July 2: Texas Representative Lloyd Doggett becomes the first House Democrat to call on Biden to withdraw.
• July 10: Actor George Clooney, who had co-hosted a Biden fundraiser in June, calls for a new nominee in a New York Times op-ed.
• July 17: Katzenberg meets Biden in Las Vegas.
• July 21: Biden ends his campaign and endorses Vice President Kamala Harris.

Emanuel said his own warnings started much earlier. At The Weekend, a September conference he hosts, Ron Klain, Biden's first White House chief of staff, was on stage, and Emanuel said he told people, "We do not need Ruth Bader Biden." The line is a play on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's name.

Rahm Emanuel and 2028

Emanuel also made the case for his brother. "Listen, I am praying my brother is one of them," he said of the Democratic primary field.

Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor and Biden's ambassador to Japan, told a WBUR audience in May that he was considering a run and would decide after the midterms. He said that if he ran, "I'm gonna be rocky road."

He has ground to make up. He is not among the top five in PolitiKool's polling average of the 2028 Democratic field, which former Vice President Kamala Harris leads at 27.9 percent, followed by California Governor Gavin Newsom at 16.3 percent.

Ari Emanuel pointed to his brother's record in the Clinton and Obama White Houses, in Congress, at Chicago City Hall and in Tokyo, and told Kelly he did not think anyone in the possible field was better suited for the moment. If his brother runs, he said, "he will be Rocky Road, and that's what we need."