Actor and Democrat donor George Clooney embraced Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee just weeks after publicly calling on Joe Biden to step aside in a New York Times op-ed.
“President Biden has shown what true leadership is,” he told CNN in a statement on Tuesday. “He’s saving democracy once again. We’re all so excited to do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest.”
Before his op-ed, Clooney’s standing with Biden had helped rally wider donor and celebrity support, even among some who had never been big Biden fans and were not enthused about backing him long before the debate. The June fundraiser he headlined raised $28 million for Biden’s reelection campaign, the most for the Democratic Party from a single event in history.
So when he wrote that the Biden he saw during the fundraiser, which also included former President Barack Obama, “was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” it was a startling admission from a leading Democratic booster and someone who has interacted with Biden privately that, in his view, the president was unfit to serve to another term.
“He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney added in his op-ed, referencing Biden’s faltering performance at the June 27 presidential debate on CNN. (CNN)
According to the Times, Harris has also seen support come from other Hollywood celebrities including Barbara Streisand, Spike Lee, Mark Hamill, John Legend, Robert De Niro, Wendell Pierce and Aaron Sorkin.
Harris on Monday locked up enough support among Democratic delegates to secure the party's nomination.
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