Joe Biden is facing calls to withdraw from the presidential election following his disastrous debate performance, including from prominent Democratic donors.
As reported by Axios, one prominent donor demanding Biden’s exit from the race is Abigail Disney, the granddaughter of Roy Disney, one of the two original co-founders of the Walt Disney Company. Abigail confirmed to CNBC on Thursday that she plans to stop all future donations to the Democratic Party as long as Biden is still the nominee.
While she still called Biden a “good man,” she made clear in her statement that “if Biden does not step down, the Democrats will lose. Of that I am absolutely certain. The consequences for the loss will be genuinely dire.”
As such, she will cease any future donations to the party “unless and until they replace Biden at the top of the ticket.”
Another top donor is Gideon Stein, the president of the Moriah Fund, who is canceling a planned donation of $3.5 million to various pro-Democrat nonprofits and other groups that support Biden’s re-election campaign.
“Virtually every major donor I’ve talked to believes that we need a new candidate in order to defeat Donald Trump,” said Stein.
Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix, similarly confirmed his intentions to cancel donations to the Democrats in a statement to the New York Times on Wednesday, saying that “Biden needs to step aside to allow a vigorous Democratic leader to beat Trump and keep us safe and prosperous.”
Several members of Congress have also expressed such sentiments after Biden’s debate fiasco. Congressman Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas) became the first elected official to formally call on Biden to step down, while Congressman Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Congresswoman Marie Glusenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) both predicted that Trump would win the election.
Biden’s performance in the first debate of the 2024 election cycle has been widely described as the worst performance in the history of televised presidential debates. The 81-year-old Biden, the oldest sitting president in American history, was criticized for looking dazed and confused the entire time, repeatedly stammering, pausing awkwardly, and giving rambling and incoherent answers.
Polls have universally declared that former President Donald Trump was the winner of the debate, with his poll numbers rising while an increasing number have called on Biden to drop out. The most recent poll from the Wall Street Journal has President Trump leading Biden by 6 points, 48% to 42%, while a New York Times poll also has him leading by 6, 49% to Biden’s 43%. Leaked internal polling from the pro-Democrat firm Open Labs shows Trump not only winning all of the swing states, but even flipping states he never won before, including New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, and Virginia.
Despite the increasingly intense speculation, Biden himself has insisted that he has no plans to withdraw from the race. During an Independence Day event at the White House, Biden could be heard telling a supporter “you got me, man. I’m not going anywhere.” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and others have attempted to dismiss the debate as “one bad night” that will not change his intentions with re-election.
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