Well, that didn't take long. After headlining a glitzy Los Angeles fundraiser and allowing his name to be attached to fundraising emails for President Joe Biden and his 2024 re-election campaign last month, actor George Clooney has decided to abandon ship.
In a guest essay published in The New York Times, Clooney says it's time for Democrats to get a new nominee to face Trump in November and Biden must step aside to save democracy, or whatever.
GEORGE CLOONEY: “.. 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 was the same man we all witnessed at the debate. .. the dam has broken.”@nytopinion https://t.co/knZUKmxIUy pic.twitter.com/Q1QZ0E3heT
— Carl Quintanilla (@carlquintanilla) July 10, 2024
A bit braggadocious, Clooney reminds readers that he has "led some of the biggest fund-raisers in my party's history" including for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden's 2020 campaign. "Last month I co-hosted the single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden's re-election."
Clooney's support for Biden, however, has run out. While gushing about his love for Biden as a person and praising the president for winning "many of the battles he's faced" since taking office, Clooney reaches a conclusion that's spreading among his fellow Democrats: the one battle Biden can't win "is the fight against time."
"It's devastating to say it," Clooney explains, "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."
Devastating indeed, especially to Biden. Clooney's bleak evaluation of Biden continues:
Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our 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. The George Stephanopoulos interview only reinforced what we saw the week before. As Democrats, we collectively hold our breath or turn down the volume whenever we see the president, who we respect, walk off Air Force One or walk back to a mic to answer an unscripted question.
While Biden's questionable fitness to serve as president has been apparent to honest observers for three years now, Clooney has just now concluded that "[w]e 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," the actor frets before revealing some additional bad news for Biden.
"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," Clooney writes. "Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly."
To wit, Clooney says that Democrat leaders "who face losing in November need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside." The actor further argues that it is "disingenuous, at best, to argue that Democrats have already spoken with their vote and therefore the nomination is settled and done, when we just received new and upsetting information," referring to Biden's disastrous debate performance and failure to demonstrate he's "back" in his interview with George Stephanopoulos.
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