George Clooney Tells CNN They’ve Been ‘Picked Out’ as Targets by Trump: ‘Usually Happens with Demagogues’
George Clooney told CNN they are being targeted by President Donald Trump, though the filmmaker insisted “Trumpism” is quickly coming to an end.
Clooney joined CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday evening to promote a live Saturday broadcast of his Broadway adaptation of Good Night, and Good Luck. CNN will air the play’s performance at 7 p.m. EST on Saturday. In the play, Clooney portrays late journalist Edward R. Murrow. Clooney previously directed the film Good Night, and Good Luck to critical acclaim in 2005.
While visiting the set of the play, Cooper noted that many people in the room likely felt we are at the “worst” time in history under Trump, a point Clooney pushed back on though he red-flagged Trump’s public feuding with media outlets like 60 Minutes — which he’s suing over an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris that he claims was manipulated to influence last year’s presidential election.
“It’s a frustrating time and I think a scary time for many people. It’s a scary time to be a news person, to be in your profession. You’ve been picked out. 60 Minutes has been picked. Most news organizations are under fire. That usually happens with demagogues, in a way. It usually is a way of the first places you attack are the news, because that’s how we inform ourselves,” Clooney said.
Clooney has long been outspoken about politics, but he’s been thrust more to the center of a number of debates surrounding the Democratic Party since he was one of the first major public figures to call for former President Joe Biden to drop his reelection bid after his one 2024 debate with Trump. In the newly-released Original Sin from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, it was revealed that Biden sparked concerns after not recognizing Clooney at a 2024 fundraiser.
Asked about the future of “Trumpism,” Clooney, whom Trump has called a “failed political pundit” and “second-rate movie star,” predicted the MAGA movement would end as soon as Trump leaves office because Republicans do not have anyone with the same “charisma” to replace him.
Clooney confidently predicted in 2016 that there was “not going to be a President Trump.”
“He’s also a celebrity, and he is charming. And to the people who like him, they think he’s funny. To a great many others, they don’t,” Clooney told Cooper. “And so when he is finished, and he will be finished, they’re gonna have to go looking for someone who can deliver the message that he delivered with the same kind of charisma, and they don’t have that.”
Watch above via CNN.
