Actress Ashley Judd issued a passionate plea to "deeply decent" President Joe Biden on Friday to drop his campaign for a more effective candidate because "we can't risk a Trump presidency."
She faulted Biden in an op ed in USA Today for his utter inability to do anything to stem his opponent's "unchecked firehose of galling lies" in the 81-year-old president's stumbling debate last month against Donald Trump.
Judd, who grew up in Kentucky, noted Trump's powerful persuasion among the American public, including among her many friends and family members in the South who "feverishly love" the former president.
Biden's debate pratfall and her loved ones' regard for Trump "activated in me profound alarm," Judd noted, because she cannot not face the possibility of Trump bringing his "incalculable cruelty" to the White House again.
"I now ask President Joe Biden to step aside," Judd wrote.
Judd added her voice to an increasing chorus of long-time Biden supporters, including several top Democrats, after his troubling debate behavior and repeated stumbles and gaffes since then. He introduced Ukraine President Vlodymyr Zelenskyy as "President Putin" at the 70th NATO Summit in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, and referred to his own vice president as Donald Trump before correcting himself in both cases.
Judd's fellow actor George Clooney also pleaded with Biden in an op ed earlier this week in the New York Times to step out ot the race, warning him that he "cannot win his fight against time."
Biden's superpac donors have now threatened to withhold some $90 million in donations until the president is no longer in the race, the Independent reported Friday.
Biden has so far remained adamant that he is in the campaign til the end. "I'm in this to complete the job I started," he declared Thursday.
Politico reported in 2019 that while Biden was running against Trump in the 2020 election, he indicated to aides he would be only a single-term president because of concerns then about his age. He also referred to himself then as a "transition president," presumably to a younger candidate once his term was up.
