Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
GEORGE CLOONEY HAS said it was a “mistake” to replace Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for the US presidential election without holding a primary.
In July 2024, Clooney penned an opinion piece in the New York Times calling on Biden to step aside – he pulled out of the race against Donald Trump less than two weeks later.
However, Clooney said he doesn’t regret his New York Times op-ed, which was titled: ‘I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee’.
“We are not going to win in November with this president,” said Clooney in his op-ed.
Speaking on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Clooney said he would write the op-ed again if given the chance, but added that the Democrats should have held a new primary to elect a presidential candidate.
Instead, Harris was nominated by a virtual vote of party delegates.
When asked if he would write the op-ed again, Clooney told CBS’s Sunday Morning: “I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary. Let’s battle-test this quickly and get it up and going.
“I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record. It’s very hard to do if the point of running is to say, ‘I’m not that person’. It’s hard to do and so she was given a very tough task.
“I think it was a mistake, quite honestly. But we are where we are. So I don’t know. To not do it would be to say, ‘I’m not gonna tell the truth’.”
Clooney penned the op-ed around three weeks after co-hosting a huge fundraiser for Biden.
It was reported in a book authored by CNN journalist Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson of Axios that Biden didn’t recognise Clooney at this fundraiser and that Barack Obama finished off Biden’s sentences when he “trailed off incoherently”.
“The Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010,” wrote Clooney in the New York Times last July.
“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
In the two weeks before Clooney’s op-ed, Biden and Trump squared off in a presidential debate which was described by pundits as “painful” for Biden.
Over the summer, Joe Biden’s son Hunter hit out at Clooney for his intervention in the New York Times in an interview with Andrew Callaghan on YouTube.
“What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his f****** life to the services of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full page ad in the f****** New York Times to undermine the president,” Hunter Biden said before he trailed off to talk about how Republicans are more unified than Democrats.
Clooney said he was aware of Hunter Biden’s remarks and added: “I could spend a lot of time debunking many of the things he said … but the reality is, I don’t think looking backwards like that is helpful to anyone. Particularly to him.
“I don’t think it is helpful to the Democratic party. So I’m just going to wish him well on his ongoing recovery and I hope he does well and just leave it at that.
“I have many personal opinions about it but I don’t find it to be helpful to have a public spat with him.”
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
have your say