George Clooney on Wednesday called on President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race just weeks after co-hosting a star-studded fundraiser for the president’s campaign.
“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 wrote in a column for The New York Times. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Keeping Biden on the ballot, Clooney said would court disaster for the entire party this November.
“We are not going to win in November with this president,” the actor wrote. “On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate. This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly.”
Clooney’s broadside comes as congressional Democrats continue to grapple over what to do about Biden following his disastrous debate performance. Some Hollywood bigwigs, including Netflix cofounder Reed Hastings and IAC chairman Barry Diller, have also backed away from Biden.
Biden has repeatedly declared that he’s not going anywhere, but there are still murmurs in Washington and elsewhere about his standing. Before Clooney’s column was published, former Speaker Nancy Pelosi notably ignored Biden’s declaration that he was staying in the race during an interview on MSNBC. Seven House Democrats, including a pair of the chamber’s most vulnerable incumbents, have called on Biden to step aside.
The president has tried to portray the backlash against him as simply “the elites,” something Clooney’s public break will likely feed into. But the Academy-Award winner is more than just an A-lister. As he wrote, he’s been a loyal Democrat. Clooney, Julia Roberts, and Barbra Streisand helped Biden raise roughly $30 million, a jaw-dropping sum, during a June fundraising event that also featured former President Barack Obama.
“I’m a lifelong Democrat; I make no apologies for that. I’m proud of what my party represents and what it stands for,” Clooney wrote.
He added that he help put on, “some of the biggest fund-raisers in my party’s history. Barack Obama in 2012. Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden in 2020.”
A representative for Biden’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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