Major Democratic donor Michael Mortiz has joined calls for President Biden to withdraw from the presidential race against former President Trump.
Mortiz, a billionaire Silicon Valley venture capitalist, became one of the Democratic Party’s largest donors to pressure Biden to drop his campaign after his public comments.
“Sadly, President Biden has a choice between vanity and virtue,” Moritz said in an email on Friday. The New York Times. “The president can choose to lead the nation into a dark and cruel era, or heed the call of time. Time has passed.”
The Times noted that Mortiz has donated $7.8 million to pro-Biden and anti-Trump efforts so far in the 2024 election cycle, with the bulk of that, about $6.8 million, going to American Bridge PAC, which is running anti-Trump ads in battleground states.
In a separate email to The New York Times, Moritz said all donations to Democrats, not just Biden, were on hold.
“I will vote for Biden, but I will not donate a penny to any Democratic fundraising calls,” he said.
Mortiz joins a growing list of Democratic donors who have called on the president to drop out of the campaign. Netflix co-founder and chairman Reed Hastings has also stepped up his calls for Biden to pull out. Former PayPal CEO Bill Harris recently said he believes the president’s departure is inevitable.
Whitney Tilson, a leading Democratic financier, said Biden has a “highly unlikely” chance of beating Trump in November. Tilson told ABC News that “even the wealthiest people have a limited amount of money” and said she would hold back her donations to support the new candidate.
Billionaire Rick Caruso also posted online that it’s time for Biden to step aside, while Lost co-creator and well-known Democratic supporter Damon Lindelof called on other donors to hold off on giving until the president makes a decision to pull out.
Abigail Disney, granddaughter of Roy O. Disney, co-founder of the Walt Disney Co., also said she plans to stop donating unless Biden withdraws.
Donors have joined several Democrats in expressing their dissatisfaction and calling for Biden to withdraw from the campaign after his shaky performance in debates between the party’s leading candidates, in which the incumbent appeared to lack energy, sound hoarse and struggle to finish points, raising concerns from the left about whether he could not only beat Trump but serve another four years in office.
As of Friday evening, four Democratic senators and more than 30 House members had urged the president to appoint a successor.
As the pressure mounts, Democratic insiders say Biden has publicly said he has no intention of conceding but that he should make a decision within days.
