Clooney compares Biden to George Washington, dodges own role in ‘machinations’ forcing prez from race: ‘Should be applauded’
George Clooney on Sunday compared Joe Biden to George Washington in his first remarks since writing a bombshell New York Times op-ed calling on the 81-year-old prez to drop his re-election bid.
The Hollywood powerhouse fawned over Biden while brushing aside the furious behind-the-scenes and sometimes cringe-worthy public “machinations” — including by Clooney himself — that led up to the president caving.
“The person who should be applauded is the president, who did the most selfless thing that anybody’s done since George Washington,” Clooney said in a nod to the nation’s first commander in chief, who stepped aside after his second term, when asked about his Times essay during an interview at the Venice Film Festival.
“All the machinations that got us there, none of that’s gonna be remembered, and it shouldn’t be,” the 63-year-old actor and director added, according to Entertainment Weekly.
There had been a unified effort from high-ranking members of the Democratic Party, including Nancy Pelosi, to push him out of the presidential race in July after his devastating debate performance against GOP foe Donald Trump.
Numerous members of Hollywood and the left-wing media such as Clooney joined in on the effort with a series of carefully placed public comments and essays.
But Clooney, whose own essay was titled “I love Joe Biden, but We Need a New Nominee,” said Sunday that he didn’t want all that to become what history remembers.
“What should be remembered is the selfless act of someone who … you know, it’s very hard to let go of power. We know that. We’ve seen it all around the world,” he said.
“And for someone to say, ‘I think there’s a better way forward,’ all the credit goes to him, and that’s really the truth,” Clooney said of Biden.
In his July essay, Clooney voiced his longtime support and admiration for Biden but said that after the president’s debate against Trump, there was no ignoring the toll age had taken on the president.
“The one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. 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,” Clooney wrote in the Times.
“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.
“Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024,” Clooney concluded in urging the prez to step aside.
In Biden’s first interview since he exited the race — paving the way for Veep Kamala Harris to take his place — he name-dropped Pelosi while saying he was pushed out by party elites. He added that House and Senate members running their own re-election campaigns decided he’d become a liability to their own futures.
“A number of my Democratic colleagues in the House and Senate thought that I was going to hurt them in the races. And I was concerned if I stayed in the race, that would be the topic — you’d be interviewing me about why did Nancy Pelosi say [something] … and I thought it’d be a real distraction,” Biden told “CBS News Sunday Morning” earlier this month.
