Both President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday are expected to attend the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner, an annual Catholic event that typically brings together opponents in the presidential race.
Trump on Monday confirmed that he would address the event virtually. The Archdiocese of New York, which hosts the dinner to benefit Catholic organizations and charities, said in a statement that it expects Biden to do the same. The Biden campaign has not publicly confirmed the Democratic presidential nominee’s participation. The dinner will be hosted by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who spoke this year at the Republican National Convention.
The dinner, which has attracted candidates from both parties since 1960, is usually the last time they appear together before the presidential election. It is intended to be a collegiate, nonpolitical event, “one of our culture’s last bastions of non-partisan unity, where the political, business, and cultural leaders come together, regardless of political affiliations, to raise money for the most vulnerable members of society, under-served children,” according to the archdiocese.
In 2016, however, the dinner was fraught with bitterness, as both Trump and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton shot insults at each other. Trump, who at one point referenced Clinton’s email scandal, pointed to revelations that she had been biased against organizations run by conservative Catholics.
“Here she is tonight, in public, pretending not to hate Catholics,” Trump said, drawing boos from the crowd.
For her part, Clinton attacked Trump for his behavior at the debates and joked that she did not think he would “be okay with a peaceful transition of power.”
Clinton and Trump, however, shook hands at the end of the dinner, which was considered a rare moment of amicability during the 2016 campaign.
