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George Clooney, who just weeks ago headlined a star-studded fundraiser that raked in $28 million for President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, has penned an emotional op-ed telling his “friend” in no uncertain terms to take himself out of the 2024 presidential race.
The actor, one of Biden’s most high-profile supporters, said that he’s witnessed first-hand a change in the 81-year-old president, as he accused party leaders of essentially gaslighting the public by blaming his abysmal debate performance against Donald Trump on a cold, and exhaustion from his busy travel schedule.
“The one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” Clooney wrote. “None of us can. 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. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
The actor’s blunt assessment comes at a critical time for Biden, who faces calls from more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers to bow out before it’s too late. The New York Times editorial board has urged Biden to step aside in two separate op-eds, saying he has “continued to appear as a man in decline” in the wake of the debate.
On Wednesday morning, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Biden could still change his mind about his re-election bid and refused to say whether she personally feels the president should press on with his campaign.
“It’s up to the president to [decide] if he’s going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short,” she insisted.
Clooney, a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party whose wife, Amal Clooney, is a prominent human rights attorney, said he “loves” Biden as a senator, vice president, and president, praising the many “battles” he’s won since taking office in January 2021.
But Biden’s halting, often confused and generally low-energy appearance on an Atlanta debate stage opposite Trump was consistent with what he observed from the 81-year-old chief executive when he hosted him for what was the single largest fundraising event for a Democratic candidate in American history last month.
Clooney said Democratic Party leaders need to stop “telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw.”
“We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign,” he said.
“Is it fair to point these things out? It has to be. This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president. On top of that, we won’t win the House, and we’re going to lose the Senate,” he continued, adding later that his opinion is shared by “every senator and congress member and governor” he has spoken to privately since the debate.
The actor and activist also compared the reaction from Democrats to how Republicans have ceded their party to Trump — “a single person who seeks to hold on to the presidency” — and chided members of Congress for “opting to wait and see if the dam breaks” rather than speaking up.
“We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth,” he said.
