President Biden arrives in Seattle for May 2024 fundraising swing

Joe Biden’s sec­ond-ever vis­it to Wash­ing­ton State as Pres­i­dent is underway!

Under­neath sun­ny spring skies, Air Force One land­ed at Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port near­ly a whole hour ahead of sched­ule, neces­si­tat­ing some quick logis­ti­cal work by the Wash­ing­ton State Patrol, Seat­tle Police Depart­ment, and oth­er law enforce­ment agencies.

The flight includ­ed “some spec­tac­u­lar views of Mount Rain­er and the Three Sis­ters Moun­tains along the way,” accord­ing to one of the reporters trav­el­ing with the President.

Pres­i­dent Biden stepped off the plane at 5 PM and was greet­ed by Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee, First Lady Tru­di Inslee, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Prami­la Jaya­pal, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Suzan Del­Bene, Seat­tle May­or Bruce Har­rell, Joanne Har­rell, Seat­tle Port Com­mis­sion­er Toshiko Hasegawa, King Coun­ty Exec­u­tive Dow Con­stan­tine, and Dow’s daugh­ter Sab­ri­na for sev­er­al min­utes before get­ting into one of the pres­i­den­tial lim­ou­sines that the Secret Ser­vice has infor­mal­ly dubbed “the Beast.”

Then, sev­en min­utes lat­er, it was off to down­town Seattle.

The State Patrol closed north­bound I‑5 to accom­mo­date the Pres­i­den­t’s motorcade.

The Pres­i­den­t’s only pub­licly dis­closed engage­ment this evening is a sold-out cam­paign recep­tion for the Biden Vic­to­ry Fund. He’ll head­line a sec­ond cam­paign recep­tion tomor­row at anoth­er not-dis­clos­able loca­tion before depart­ing the region.

First Lady Jill Biden, mean­while, is doing the same thing down in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, hav­ing flown south yes­ter­day from Port­land pri­or to Biden’s jour­ney north today.

Biden’s Sat­ur­day morn­ing event could be like the one he just came from in Palo Alto.

Accord­ing to pool reports, Biden spoke from a fair­ly inti­mate room that was sort of a liv­ing room and kitchen com­bo. It had a series of couch­es arranged and posi­tioned fac­ing a small podi­um and teleprompter where the Pres­i­dent stood. On a near­by patio there were sev­er­al tables with blue place­set­tings. Only about thir­ty peo­ple were in the room for Biden’s speech (includ­ing for­mer Yahoo CEO Maris­sa May­er), which last­ed about sev­en­teen minutes.

Biden point­ed out in his remarks that 1.6 mil­lion peo­ple have donat­ed to his cam­paign, with nine­ty-sev­en per­cent of the con­tri­bu­tions under $200.

He also said his cam­paign has opened a hun­dred and fifty offices in bat­tle­ground states “and Trump has opened zero offices. And it’s not just because he’s on trial.”

“The press doesn’t want to write about it but the momen­tum is clear­ly in our favor, with polls mov­ing toward us and away from Trump,” he said.

He cit­ed sev­er­al polls but then added: “I quite frankly don’t think polls mean any­thing today.” The Pres­i­dent then said it’s hard to get a read on a poll, and tough for poll­sters to get peo­ple to respond. And he’s not wrong about that.

We’ll bring you fur­ther updates on the Pres­i­den­t’s vis­it in the hours ahead.