Hollywood donors grew shriller and more visceral in their demands that Pres. Joe Biden end his reelection bid Monday, taking pointed stabs at the president, his son and the First Lady.
They personally attacked the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and first lady Jill Biden, both of whom have insisted Biden stay in the race. And they suggested Biden is putting his ego above the country.
“He’s running against a felon and now he’s suddenly taking advice from his son who is a convicted felon?” Hollywood heavyweight Peter Benedek, co-founder of United Talent Agency, asked rhetorically in an email to the Daily Beast. (Benedek is agent to Joanna Coles, the Beast’s Chief Creative Officer.) “It’s time to go. He’s sullying his profound legacy.”
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Benedek weighed in alongside Hollywood mega agent Ari Emanuel, whose clients include Meghan Markle and Oprah Winfrey. The president, they both argued, is now damaging his own reputation and legacy.
Their tough love comes mere weeks after Hollywood’s star-studded fundraiser that raked in $30 million for the Biden campaign for president.
Emanuel, CEO of Endeavor and TKO Group Holdings–whose brother, Rahm Emanuel, is currently serving as U.S. ambassador to Japan in the Biden administration–argued on Monday that Biden has morphed into a version of his political nemesis.
“The idea that Mr. Biden ‘alone can fix it’ is a self-aggrandising delusion on a Trumpian scale. No wonder the audience at the president's post-debate rally sounded just like a MAGA crowd from 2016,” Emanuel wrote in a piece published in The Economist, noting that some in the audience who chanted "Lock him up!”
“Mr. Biden's advisers are just as deluded if they think they can tell Americans they didn't see what they saw on that debate stage,” Emanual said. “’One bad night’ or ‘the effects of a cold’ is spin that would make even Mr. Trump's flacks blush.”
Emanuel, who once represented Trump, noted that the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, denied that the president had seen a physician after the debate, only to have the president himself admit later during a meeting with Democratic governors that he did, in fact, see a doctor. “Just as Mr. Trump's White House frequently lied about his medical treatments, from routine colonoscopies to when he nearly died from covid,” the Hollywood super agent wrote.
Filmmaker and Democratic donor Rob Reiner also joined the Hollywood blowback.
“It’s time to stop fucking around. If the Convicted Felon wins, we lose our Democracy. Joe Biden has effectively served US with honor, decency, and dignity. It’s time for Joe Biden to step down,” Reiner tweeted Sunday.
However, on Monday, Reiner appeared to waffle a bit. “If we see the Joe Biden that appeared on Morning Joe today every day until Nov.5, he’ll be able to shut up people like me who think he should step aside,” Reiner posted on X.
Emanuel is not waffling but waging a no-holds-barred aim at the Biden family, comparing them to the Trumps. In The Economist, the Endeavor CEO chided Jill Biden for praising her husband’s dismal debate performance as if he were a school child.
“When Jill Biden told her husband after the debate, ‘Joe, you did such a great job! You answered every question! You knew all the facts!’, and the next day defiantly wore a dress plastered with the word ‘VOTE’, I couldn't help but think of Melania Trump wearing a coat that said ‘I REALLY DONT' CARE, DO U?’ after touring a detention center for child migrants,” he wrote.
Benedek, Reiner and Emanuel are not considered mega donors: Reiner, for example, has contributed at least $55,800 to Democrats over the past decade while Benedek has given nearly $40,000 on top of tens of thousands of dollars funneled through his United Talent Agency PAC. But all three are key members of an elite network of Hollywood fundraisers and bundlers that carries considerable clout.
The Hollywood mogul followed the lead of his brother Ezekiel Emanuel, the physician, who wrote in a piece for The Atlantic last week that Biden, who he said showed a “striking deficit of fluid intelligence” during his televised debate against Trump, should withdraw from the 2024 race. Ari Emanuel cited several presidential gaffes and stumbles for his reasoning, including Biden referring to himself during a July 4 radio show as the "first Black woman to serve with a Black president.”
And while he said the “Joe Biden we saw on the debate stage is simply not up to the job of defeating Mr. Trump, let alone governing for four more years,” Emanuel said putting Vice President Kamala Harris atop the ticket also “carries significant risks.”
Instead, he envisions a winning ticket of Democratic swing-state governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, which he said “would electrify the country and put Democrats well on their way to securing a strong majority in the electoral college.”
And if that fails? Then perhaps Whitmer and Wes Moore, the young, dynamic governor of Maryland, “should jointly declare their candidacies,” he floated.
“We're not MAGA Republicans. The Democratic Party is not a mindless cult of personality,” Emanuel urged. “We are patriots who put the country first. Let’s show it.”
