Actor George Clooney has joined the growing list of politicians and celebrities calling on President Joe Biden step aside in the 2024 race.
Actor George Clooney has joined the growing list of politicians and celebrities calling on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, in a big blow to the president.
Clooney, a lifelong Democrat, shifted his support away from Biden just weeks after co-headlining a fundraiser for his reelection campaign that was the largest ever supporting a Democratic candidate. It was there that ex-President Barack Obama guided Biden off the stage when he appeared to freeze.
The American director and film producer wrote, ‘I love Joe Biden’, and that he believes in him in multiple ways and that he’s won many battles.
‘But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,’ said Clooney in an opinion essay published in The New York Times on Wednesday.
‘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.’
Clooney argued that ‘this is about age’, and ‘nothing more’.
Biden, 81, is the oldest president in US history and stumbled through the first presidential debate against ex-President Donald Trump, 78, in late June, uttering numerous blunders and losing his train of thought.
The president’s interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Friday ‘only reinforced what we saw the week before’, according to Clooney.
‘This is about age. Nothing more. But also nothing that can be reversed,’ he wrote.
‘We are not going to win in November with this president.’
The Syriana actor urged lawmakers to ask Biden to voluntarily step aside.
‘Yet most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks. But the dam has broken,’ Clooney wrote. ‘We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.’
He named several top Democrats including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Pelosi on Wednesday did not say that Biden should stay in the race, as he has been defiantly insisting he will do.
‘I want him to do whatever he decides to do,’ she said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show. ‘We’re all encouraging him to make that decision, because time is running short.’
Clooney advocated for Democrats to consider a new nominee for president ahead of the party’s convention next month.
‘Would it be messy? Yes. Democracy is messy,’ Clooney wrote. ‘But would it enliven our party and wake up voters who, long before the June debate, had already checked out? It sure would.’
The Biden campaign in response to Clooney’s opinion piece referenced the president’s letter to congressional Democrats pledging to continue his run.
Biden’s campaign also stated that he stayed more than three hours at the fundraiser in Los Angeles despite just having gotten back from a trip to Europe.
Also on Wednesday, Pat Ryan representing upstate New York became the eighth House Democrat to call on Biden to end his campaign ‘for the good of our country’.
New York Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado the same day stated that ‘we should move forward with a nominee capable of reinvigorating and re-energizing Americans’.
At least a half dozen American celebrities have publicly said Biden should abandon his reelection bid, including actors Rob Reiner and John Cusack and author Stephen King.
While steadily losing the confidence of more Democratic leaders and Hollywood figures, Biden welcomed world leaders to the NATO Summit in Washington, DC, and forged forward with working sessions.
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