Robert Redford Backs Joe Biden For President, Says Four More Years Of Donald Trump “Would Accelerate Our Slide Toward Autocracy”
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Robert Redford says that he will vote for Joe Biden for president, warning in a new op ed that another four years of Donald Trump “would accelerate our slide toward autocracy.”
“I don’t make a practice of publicly announcing my vote. But this election year is different,” Redford wrote in an essay published on CNN.com. “And I believe Biden was made for this moment. Biden leads with his heart. I don’t mean that in a soft and sentimental way. I’m talking about a fierce compassion — the kind that fuels him, that drives him to fight against racial and economic injustice, that won’t let him rest while people are struggling.”
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Redford, 83, has long been an environmental activist, but he has not been quite as active in electoral politics as some of his contemporaries (albeit the alternate history of HBO’s Watchmen has him as president).
In the essay, he wrote that Trump’s presidency has been one of a “moral vacuum.”
“Instead of a president who says we’re all in it together, we have a president who’s in it for himself,” he wrote.
“Instead of words that uplift and unite, we hear words that inflame and divide.”
Redford added, “When someone retweets (and then deletes) a video of a supporter shouting ‘white power’ or calls journalists ‘enemies of the state,’ when he turns a lifesaving mask against contagion into a weapon in a culture war, when he orders the police and the military to tear gas peaceful protestors so he can wave a Bible at the cameras, he sacrifices — again and again — any claim to moral authority.”
Video: 8 Robert Redford films to celebrate his 80th birthday
“Another four years of this would degrade our country beyond repair.”
He also wrote that the Trump administration has engaged in an “assault” on environmental laws, including the decision to pull out of the Paris global climate accord.
“Four more years would bring untold damage to our planet — our home,” he wrote.
He also wrote that when he was a kid, he recalled listening to Franklin D. Roosevelt as a voice of authority and empathy.
“Despite Trump — despite his daily efforts to divide us — I see much of the country beginning to reunite again, the way it did when I was a kid,” he wrote.
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