Hollywood actor and filmmaker Robert Redford on Wednesday threw his support behind former Vice President Joe Biden for the White House, declaring that President Donald Trump’s re-election would result in a “slide toward autocracy” in the United States.
Redford writes in a CNN opinion-editorial:
Four more years [of Trump] would accelerate our slide toward autocracy. It would be taken as free license to punish more so-called “traitors” and wage more petty vendettas — with the full weight of the Justice Department behind them. […]
Joe Biden is on the ballot, and I’m confident he will bring these qualities back to White House. […]
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.
Redford’s endorsement of Biden comes as no surprise. The All Is Lost star, a staunch environmental activist, has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s climate policies, and more recently, its handling of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.
“As the pandemic began its global march,” Redford and his son, James, wrote in a May op-ed for NBC News. “President Donald Trump failed to act quickly and decisively, likely increasing its toll and worsening our pain and suffering.”
The president’s “failure…to embrace or even understand sound scientific consensus about what must be done to protect this nation and its people,” they added. “[T]he potential calamity of climate change…looms on the horizon.”
In the same op-ed, Robert Redford and his son accused President Trump of leading a “dictator-like attack” on the country’s values.
“We’re up against a crisis I never thought I’d see in my lifetime: a dictator-like attack by President Donald Trump on everything this country stands for,” they wrote. “It’s time for Trump to go — along with those in Congress who have chosen party loyalty over their oath to ‘solemnly affirm’ their support for the Constitution of the United States. And it’s up to us to make that happen, through the power of our votes.”
Redford, who is reportedly worth an estimated $170 million, made headlines last year for lamenting that he felt “out of place” in the U.S. due to the “bigotry” and “mean-spiritedness” of its politics.
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