Rob Reiner joins major donors calling for Joe Biden to resign

Joe Biden is touring Pennsylvania today in an effort to get his reelection campaign back on track, but here in Hollywood, the president just lost another major high-profile donor after his June 27 debate debacle.

Just over a week after hosting a fundraiser for Vice President Kamala Harris for incumbents, Rob Reiner called on President Biden to “step aside.”

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Calling the 81-year-old president a man who served the nation with “honor, decency and dignity,” the American President Watchmen director Damon Lindelof, Netflix’s Reed Hastings and Abigail Disney all pleaded with Biden last week to drop out of the race. Like the Watchmen showrunner and others, Reiner believes saving American democracy from Donald Trump is more important than seeing the sometimes uncertain and disjointed Biden stay in his final bid for the White House.

It’s time to stop messing around. If the convict wins, we will lose our democracy. Joe Biden has served the United States with honor, decency, and dignity. It’s time for Joe Biden to resign.

— Rob Reiner (@robreiner) July 7, 2024

Perhaps more than previous major donors or even high-ranking elected Democrats seeking to tip the balance in favor of Biden’s withdrawal from the race, Reiner is a cannonball. A staunch supporter not only of Joe Biden but of Democratic candidates up and down the ballot over the decades, losing Reiner is like losing the grandmothers of Stalingrad for the president.

“He’s done,” another prominent Hollywood director told Deadline today of Biden after learning of Reiner’s defection.

Beyond the singular power of Reiner’s statement Sunday, the All in the Family alum is the latest member of a chorus of Democrats who doubt Biden can overcome a disastrous debate performance. Reiner’s message is also a signal that calls for the president to step down won’t stop, even after his July 22 interview with George Stephanopoulos — which was a less-than-stellar event in its own right for those who doubt Biden’s ability to move forward.

In his public and private meetings with Democratic governors, Biden has insisted that he remains in the race. With a week likely to see even louder calls for his resignation, the president has said that his performance, which he himself called “poor,” was an isolated incident, due to a cold and exhaustion, and that he is “in it to win.”

Opinion polls, which are collapsing, do not seem to agree.

Ted Johnson contributed to this report

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