WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden faced new pressure on Wednesday to step down and end his re-election campaign amid concern about his fitness for office following the presidential debate last month.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it’s up to Biden to decide what he wants to do, despite the President saying he would remain in the race.
“It’s up to the president to decide if he is going to run,” she said. “We’re all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short.”
“I want him to do whatever he decides to do. And that’s the way it is. Whatever he decides, we go with,” Pelosi added.
Hours later Hollywood star George Clooney called for Biden to step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee in a scathing Op-Ed in the New York Times.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” Clooney wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
“Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw,” Clooney added.
Clooney’s scathing words came just weeks after the actor hosted a fundraiser for Biden with actor Julia Roberts, which raised more than $30 million in what the Biden campaign said was the largest Democratic fundraiser in history.
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, Disney heir Abigail Disney and filmmaker Rob Reiner are among several big name Hollywood donors that have said Biden should end his campaign.
“Let’s hear from Wes Moore and Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear and J.B. Pritzker and others,” Clooney said.
Senator Peter Welch called on Biden to leave the race in an op-ed published late on Wednesday, the first Democratic senator to call for the President to step aside.
