Ashley Judd pens deeply personal op-ed calling on Biden to step aside: ‘We can’t risk a Trump presidency’

Actress says president was unable to counter Trump at debate as he ‘gushed a firehose of galling lies’

Actress Ashley Judd has joined the strengthening chorus of voices — which now includes several celebrities — calling on President Joe Biden to step aside.

In a deeply personal and heartfelt op-ed for USA Today, she wrote that some of her “beloved chosen and biological family ... feverishly love Donald Trump,” but she can’t imagine the former president bringing his “cruelty” to the White House for a second term.

She added that during the disastrous June 27 debate — where Biden appeared confused and frail, losing his train of thought and making several gaffes— the president was unable to counter Trump as he “gushed a firehose of galling lies.”

“I now ask President Joe Biden to step aside,” she wrote.

Judd’s op-ed, which argues that “we can’t risk a Trump presidency,” comes as an increasing number of elected Democrats and activists are calling on the president to leave his race for re-election.

Despite the mounting pressure, Biden has remained resolute about his decision to press on with his re-election bid, stating in no uncertain terms during his solo press conference Thursday night that he’s in it to win.

President Joe Biden speaks at a news conference on the final day of the NATO summit in Washington, July 11, 2024. He said he’s staying in the race (AP)

After making several noteworthy gaffes, like referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as “Putin” earlier in the day and Vice President Kamala Harris as “Vice President Trump” during the press conference, Biden reaffirmed that he’s running, saying “I think I’m the most qualified. I beat him once and I will beat him again.”

He insisted: “I’m not in this for my legacy. I’m in it to finish the job I’ve started.”

Judd is not the first actor to call on Biden to go. In a damning op-ed for The New York Times, George Clooney wrote on Wednesday that “the one battle” Biden “cannot win is the fight against time.” His plea to Biden and the Democratic party comes just weeks after Clooney hosted a fundraiser in Los Angeles that pulled in almost $30 million for the president.

“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 said. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Judd, an outspoken activist on reproductive rights, wrote in her Friday op-ed that “The defense of our cherished rights and freedoms, the moral imperative that we do better by more people, and our bodies, cannot be left to voters who see and are frightened of the consequences of President Biden’s obvious limitations, or who are now not going to vote.”

Ashley Judd attends the "Lazareth" Special Screening at Crosby Street Hotel on May 09, 2024 in New York City. She’s calling on Biden to step aside (Getty Images)

She added: “We take the risk of an off night and minimize the warning signs at our gravest peril.”

The actress went on to say that if Trump returns to the White House, millions of people will face “hurt, devastation and loss.”

“He would wield the power of the presidency with unprecedented, incalculable cruelty and unfairness,” she wrote.

Judd noted that she was fired by a company and lost a “life-altering paycheck” after reading the I am a Nasty Woman poem at the Women’s March in 2017. “That is the double standard of American life for women under Donald Trump. And for all who disagree with him.”

Towards the end of her op-ed, she wrote, “Where I sit in rural Tennessee, it is clear that Americans have already made up their minds against President Biden, on top of the majority who love to vote for Donald Trump.”