As the creator of “Jaws,” “E.T.” and Indiana Jones, Steven Spielberg can rightly be called one of America’s greatest living storytellers, cinematic or otherwise.
Now, a new report says that the Oscar-winning filmmaker will use his creative gifts to help Joe Biden and the Democrats craft a narrative for August’s Democratic National Convention to convince Americans they should elect the president to a second term.
President Joe Biden speaks before signing a $95 billion Ukraine aid package that also includes support for Israel, Taiwan, and other allies, in the State Dining Room of the White House, Wednesday, April 24, 2024, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Matthew Belloni, co-founder of Puck News, said in his newsletter Thursday that Spielberg “has been quietly but actively working” with the Biden campaign to help choreograph August’s convention in Chicago. Starting a few months ago, Belloni reported, Spielberg began participating in multiple strategy sessions “on how to best tell the president’s story, his accomplishments, and his vision for a second term.”
Quite a bit of ink has been spilled in recent months over Biden’s need for a “narrative” to “explain clearly why he’s running” again, as presidential historian Chris Whipple wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times. This need also was explained by New Yorker writer Evan Osnos in March, who said, “Biden should be cruising to re-election” because he “has presided over the passage of ambitious legislation, the end of the COVID pandemic and an economic revival beyond anyone’s expectation.”
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Meanwhile, Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump, is facing 91 criminal counts. Osnos also said the former president has “suggested that if he is elected he will fire as many as 50,000 civil servants and replace them with loyalists, deputize the National Guard as a mass-deportation force, and root out what he calls ‘the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.’”
And yet, as of Friday, Biden and Trump are essentially tied in national polls, with Trump holding a tenuous lead in key swing states, ABC News reported.
It appears that the Biden team hopes that Spielberg can help hone the president’s message. The “Jurassic World” director, whose net worth is estimated to be around $4.8 billion, also is known as “a big Biden fundraiser,” and his friend and former DreamWorks business partner Jeffrey Katzenberg is a chair of the Biden campaign, Belloni reported.
Spielberg helped consult some on the Democrats’ 2020 convention, which was held virtually, but he is playing a bigger role this year, a source told Belloni. Spielberg could even direct or produce a short film about Biden that would be shown at the convention — as he did for Barack Obama in 2008. Spielberg gained even more experience telling a president’s story when he directed the 2012 film, “Lincoln.”
So, helping on the Biden campaign is giving Spielberg something to do, besides working on his next movie. Spielberg’s last film, the 2022 autobiographical coming-of-age story “The Fabelmans,” was nominated for seven Academy Awards, but didn’t win any. Since then, people in Hollywood have been wondering what his next project will be, with Belloni providing the answer. “Surprise: It’s not a movie,” Belloni said, but his “Biden project.”