President Trump slipped into Orange County for less than three hours Sunday to raise money for his cash-strapped campaign. His high-dollar fundraiser on exclusive Lido Isle off Newport Beach took place just over two weeks before election day and as the president is trailing Democratic nominee Joe Biden in polls.

“Everyone assumes he’s going to go to battleground states. No one really thinks about how Orange County, California, is an ATM machine,” said Jon Fleischman, a former state GOP official.

Trump told attendees that Republicans are going to win and take back the House, said former Rep. Darrell Issa.

Issa, a Republican who retired in 2018 from his seat in California’s 49th District, said after the event that Trump’s message, “which is hard to understand in California,” was that in the swing states, his “momentum is starting to take him into the positive.” Issa is now running for the 50th District seat held until this year by Republican Duncan Hunter, who will soon serve time at a West Texas prison camp for conspiring to misuse campaign funds.

Trump was at “the top of his game,” Issa said, and joked around with host Palmer Luckey at the 28-year-old multimillionaire tech savant’s Lido Isle mansion. The Mike Love-led incarnation of the Beach Boys performed (cofounders Brian Love and Al Jardine disavowed the appearance, in a statement to Variety), and former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Jeff “Skunk” Baxter of the Doobie Brothers played guitar.

“It was a good party, lots of oldies,” Issa said.

Thousands lined the roads from Pacific Coast Highway to the entry to Lido Isle as the president’s motorcade passed by shortly after noon. Supporters of Trump and Biden had clashed earlier.