Actor George Clooney opened up about his decision to drop his support for former President Joe Biden in a new interview, saying seeing him “up close” last year was enough to dissuade him.
Clooney, a lifelong Democrat, defended his decision to pen a New York Times opinion piece calling for Biden to leave the presidential race just weeks after the A-lister and other Hollywood stars helped garner $30 million in donations for Biden at a Los Angeles fundraiser.
“I was raised to tell the truth,” Clooney, the son of a journalist, said when asked about the essay on “60 Minutes” Sunday. “I had seen the president up close for his fundraiser, and I was surprised, and so I feel as if there were a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that. And I was not proud of that, and I also believed I had to tell the truth.”
Clooney’s essay came on the heels of Biden’s dismal debate showing that sent shockwaves through the party last June.
“I’ve always liked Joe Biden and I like him still,” Clooney later added, revealing that he was “surprised” by Biden when he saw the former president in person.
“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 last July.
Less than two weeks later, Biden bowed out of the race under intense party pressure, endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the Democratic nomination. She went on to lose to Trump.
Clooney appeared on the CBS News program on Sunday to promote “Good Night, and Good Luck,” which marks his Broadway debut playing renowned journalist Edward R. Murrow.
The play focuses on Murrow’s conflict with anti-Communist Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a theme that Clooney argued mirrored what journalists are facing under Trump’s second term.
“ABC has just settled a lawsuit with the Trump administration. And CBS News is in the process … We’re seeing this idea of using government to scare or fine or use corporations — to make journalists smaller,” Clooney told “60 Minutes.”
“Governments don’t like the freedom of the press. They never have. And that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you’re on. They don’t like the press,” he added.
TRUMP CALLS ’60 MINUTES’ GEORGE CLOONEY SEGMENT A ‘PUFF PIECE’
The defamation suit against ABC was formally dismissed in December after Trump reached a settlement worth $15 million with the network and its top anchor, George Stephanopoulos.
Trump filed the defamation suit against Stephanopoulos after he asserted that Trump was found “liable for rape” in a civil case during a contentious interview with Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., last year.
The president is also seeking $20 billion in damages from “60 Minutes” and CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, over an interview in October with Harris leading up to the 2024 presidential election.
The lawsuit, initially filed in October shortly before Trump won a second term and later expanded last month, accuses the program of “partisan and unlawful acts of election and voter interference” for the way it edited the interview and aired different clips of Harris’ responses.
GEORGE CLOONEY CHEERS ‘COURAGE’ OF JOURNALISTS WHO STAND ‘ON RIGHT SIDE OF HISTORY’ AGAINST HATERS
“When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed,” Clooney said, referencing the lawsuits and the importance of journalism.
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Following the interview, Trump dismissed Clooney’s “60 Minutes” appearance as a “puff piece” after the actor lodged criticisms at the commander-in-chief in between discussing his debut on Broadway.
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