President Biden will join pop star Elton John at the Stonewall Inn Friday to mark the 55th anniversary of the first night of riots that helped launch the modern gay rights movement — before hitting up the Hammerstein Ballroom for a big-money fundraiser, The Post has learned.
The White House had teased that Biden, 81, would be in New York for an “official event” one day after he takes part in the first of two scheduled presidential debates against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in Atlanta.
The evening fundraiser will be Biden’s first in the city since former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton helped the incumbent haul in $25 million from an event at Radio City Music Hall back in March.
On Saturday, Biden will travel to East Hampton for a pair of additional fundraisers before concluding his post-debate travel with a stop in Red Bank, NJ.
The White House and Biden campaign did not immediately respond to The Post’s requests for comment on the Friday events.
Biden’s looming televised clash with Trump, 78, is considered so high-stakes ahead of the Nov. 5 election that he is expected to remain out of sight for a full week at Camp David to prepare for the CNN-hosted forum.
The nation’s oldest-ever sitting president will seek to associate himself with the gay rights movement despite a mixed record on LGBT issues.
As a senator in the 1990s, Biden was one of 32 Senate Democrats who voted to federally ban same-sex marriage. He also voted for the bill that imposed the military’s since-repealed “don’t act, don’t tell” policy, which barred openly LGBT members, and voted for a federal funding restriction to prevent schools from pushing “for the promotion of homosexuality as a positive lifestyle alternative.”
But Biden apparently had a change of heart late in life, saying as vice president in 2012 that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage — a remark widely seen as inspiring then-President Obama to abandon his own opposition to gays and lesbians marrying.
In 2021, Biden repealed Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.
Trump has sought to peel off gay and lesbian voters in prior elections, including by posing with a rainbow flag during the 2016 campaign.
Trump was “the first president to start as president approving of gay marriage,” his then-West Wing adviser Kellyanne Conway said in 2019.
The 45th president appointed the country’s first openly gay Cabinet-level official, acting national intelligence director Ric Grenell, in 2020, but has since drawn criticism from LGBT advocacy groups over frequent vows to ban transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.
Biden, meanwhile, appointed the first Senate-approved openly gay Cabinet member, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, and in 2022 signed bipartisan legislation that affirmed the Supreme Court’s 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage nationwide.
