An heiress of the Disney family fortune said that she would be halting her donations to the Democratic Party until President Joe Biden decides to bow out in his re-election campaign and let someone else try to win the White House in November’s election.
Abigail Disney, a major donor to the Democratic Party, made that announcement Thursday, saying her money would only resume flowing to liberal candidates once Biden drops out.
As she told CNBC:
“This is realism, not disrespect. 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.”
One day after that announcement, another prominent Democrat donor — Barry Diller, a media tycoon — followed in her footsteps. He to the Ankler media outlet that he and his wife, famed designer Diane von Furstenberg, were not holding firm with Biden’s campaign.
Diller has already donated $100,000 to Biden and the Democratic Party in this election cycle. He was a major donor to Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 presidential campaign, which is when Republican Donald Trump won the White House.
In a statement released this week, Disney said that one alternative candidate who could beat Trump is Vice President Kamala Harris. She said:
“If Democrats would tolerate any of her perceived shortcomings even one-tenth as much as they have tolerated Biden’s … we can win this election by a lot.”
While Disney certainly is a large and well-known donor to the Democrats, she is still in the minority in terms of those who have officially withdrawn their financial support of Biden.
Other major donors, while questioning the future of the Biden campaign, have largely remained by his side to this point — at least publicly.
Reuters reported earlier this week that the Biden campaign held a hastily-scheduled phone call with hundreds of the top donors to his campaign. During that call, the Biden team promised that they’d make him more visible through interviews and town halls, which they hope will reassure the public that he’s fit and healthy for the job.
Yet, despite these assurances, Reuters reported that the campaign had to field multiple “pointed” questions from donors, such as “can the president make it through a campaign and another term?”
Ari Emanuel, a prominent Democratic donor and powerbroker in Hollywood, last week recalled that when his father turned 81 years old, he had to take his car from him. He then opined that if you wouldn’t want Trump or Biden to drive at night, “you cannot have them running a $27 trillion company called the United States.”
As he said:
“The lifeblood to a campaign is money, and maybe the only way this gets [solved] is if the money starts drying up.”
What some donors are deciding to do, he said, is divert their funds to congressional races instead of the presidential race. And if that continues — or if more major donors like Disney withhold their funding — then the Biden campaign could be in real trouble.
