Superstars George and Amal Clooney will be co-hosting cocktails and dinner with Hillary Clinton in April fundraisers in Los Angeles on April 16 and San Francisco a day earlier. Proceeds will go to the Hillary Victory Fund.

The Clinton campaign is running a contest that gives supporters across America the chance to meet Clinton, George and Amal at their home. Would-be guests can text CLOONEY to 47246 and donate $10 to enter the lottery.

George Clooney has nothing but praise for Hillary Clinton, while agreeing that candidate Bernie Sanders has offered much critical conversation to the public dialogue. Without mentioning Donald Trump by name, George Clooney refers to the GOP frontrunner's slogan and rhetoric in his letter to friends and potential donors.

“If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, you’d think we’re a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims, and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again,” Clooney writes.

“The truth is that the only thing that would prevent America from being great would be to empower these voices.”

It's important to note that Clooney has not hesitated to criticize Clinton in the past. Today Clooney sent out a letter about theClinton April 16 LA fundraiser, praising her as the only candidate ready to lead America.

“In all of this clutter, there’s been one consistent voice — a voice of tolerance and experience from a candidate who’s spent a lifetime fighting for the rights of the less fortunate,” Clooney says of Clinton, the “only grown-up in the room” and the leading Democratic contender for the presidential nomination. “A candidate who knows firsthand the complexity of our international relationships. That candidate is Hillary Clinton.”

Co-sponsors for the Clooney LA event are Jeffrey and Marilyn Katzenberg, Steven Speilberg and Kate Capshaw, and Haim and Cheryl Saban. HIllary will be in Los Angeles on Thursday, March 24 for a series of fundraisers, including an event at the nightclub Avalon Hollywood and a reception at the home of ICM Partners’ Chris Silbermann and Julia Franz.

About Victory Funds

In late February 2016, the Washington Post reported that a record 32 state parties signed onto the Democratic National Committee's victory fundraising committee. Thanks to a much disputed 2014 US Supreme Court decision that eliminated a cap on how much donors can contribute to federal campaigns in a single year.

Victory funds allow candidates to pool large amounts of money from a single donor. They work like this, explains US News: An individual can give $2,700 for a candidate's primary campaign, another $2,700 for the general election, $33,400 every year to the party and $10,000 per year to each state party.

That means a victory fund like Clinton's, which is aligned with 33 state parties, can — and does — take checks of more than $350,000.

Obama and 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney both used those fundraising devices in the last election, but they became even more powerful in 2014, when the Supreme Court struck down the cap on what any one donor can contribute each year.

The Democratic National Committee began 2015 $1 million in the red, a situational that Clinton remedied with fundraising efforts that had the DNC closing out the year with $17 for Democratic candidates. Bernie Sanders has raised nothing for other Democratic candidates at a moment when Democrats see the opportunity of regaining the Senate. A Trump candidacy could potentially even put the House of Representatives in play.

What do Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have in common? This message. Mashable

Hearing Trump and Sanders, it might be easy to assume that the entire country is in a state of depression about the current economic situation. We are one step away from going to hell in a handbasket.

Much national data doesn't confirm that America is in a total funk. A Pew Research report found people aren't terribly optimistic about where the country's economy is heading, but they're far from buying up canned foods and moving to the woods.

Similarly, a closely watched indicator of consumer sentiment is similarly down slightly but still relatively stable over the past year."

TRUTH-O-METER: PolitiFact.com Rates the Candidates

For all the discussion about her truthfulness, Hillary rates higher than Bernie on the campaign trail, says Politifact. Trump & Cruz get bad grades, Kasich much better. via

Jill Abramson on Hillary Clinton: 'She does get more 'scrutiny' than men Politico

Former executive editor of the New York Times Jill Abramson agreed in an interview with Politico's Glenn Thrush that Hillary Clinton gets more scrutiny than the male candidates.

“[W]e, for some reason, expect total purity from a woman candidate,” added Abramson, who rose to the Times’ top job in 2011. “I did not feel, during my regime, that we were giving her way more scrutiny than anyone else.” But, she said, “Where I think Hillary Clinton faces, you know, certainly more of a burden is that the controversies she’s been in are immediately labeled, you know, ‘travelgate or ‘emailgate.’ … If you actually asked people what about any of these controversies bothers them, they don’t know anything specific about any of them.”