indica News Bureau-
The pandemic may have prevented the presidential nominees and their supporters to host fundraisers, as they say, the show must go on.
In that spirit, Deven Parekh, a leading Indian-American global venture capitalist hosted a virtual fundraiser for Joe Biden, who is the presumptive presidential nominee of the opposition Democratic Party.
Parekh, who is the managing director of Insight Partners, jointly hosted a high-profile fundraiser along with Roger Altman, founder of Evercore, Blair Effron, founder of Centerview Partners, and former ambassador Jane Hartley. It was conducted to primarily focus on some of the top Wall Street donors.
While Biden is still behind his Republican opponent in fundraising efforts, he is making great strides in catching up, according to financial reports.
In his brief five minutes of remarks, Biden focused on how unprepared President Trump was to handle the health and economic consequences brought forth by the coronavirus pandemic.
As of today, the death toll in the US due to coronavirus approaches the 100,000 mark and over 1.61 million infections, according to a tally kept by Johns Hopkins University, and yet there is no clear strategy to slow down the climb.
Acknowledging the “anxious times” the country is living in, especially New Yorkers, Biden told donors he appreciates how they’ve stuck with him throughout the pandemic by donating to his campaign and rallied them to continue to do so for the next several months.
“We have less than six months to Election Day. Who’s counting as the old saying goes,” Biden jokes. “Trump has been raising money since the day he got elected in 2016.”
Biden then criticized Trump’s leadership, referencing how if Trump took COVID-19 seriously, fewer Americans would have died.
Besides the death toll, the unemployment level has reached an all-time high with over 33 million Americans out of job, and many experts are predicting a looming economic recession that could match the “Great Depression”.
Biden acknowledged how the virus was the match that lit the fire, but that its consequences were exacerbated because Trump undermined the core pillars of our economic strength in the last three years.
With this fundraiser, Parekh hopes to give Biden the needed push to match Trump’s collection. Parekh was a major fundraiser for former President Barack Obama, during whose administration he served as a board of directors of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.
