George Clooney Tells Media They ‘Dropped the Ball’ Covering Biden’s ‘Incapacities’
Screenshot via CBS
George Clooney accused the media of dropping the ball when it came to covering former President Joe Biden’s “incapacities.”
Clooney made waves in July when he penned an op-ed calling for Biden to drop his reelection campaign. In the op-ed, Clooney questioned Biden’s fitness to continue serving as 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 at the time.
In an interview this week with The New York Times’ Maureen Dowd to promote his stage version of Good Night and Good Luck, Clooney opened up about his op-ed and said the media “dropped the ball” in their coverage of Biden.
Clooney recalled attending a fundraiser for Biden in June and being shocked at what he saw. Dowd wrote that Clooney was “gobsmacked” by Biden’s state.
“I saw him for hours a year earlier at the Kennedy Center, and I saw someone much less sharp,” he said. “I’ve always liked Joe Biden, and I like him still.”
Biden “abdicated” his responsibility by “hiding his incapacities,” Clooney told Dowd, and the media deserved some blame too.
“The media, in many ways, dropped the ball,” the filmmaker said.
Clooney’s call for Biden to drop out got the attention of President Donald Trump at the time, and he took to Truth Social to say Clooney should “get out of politics.”
“Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television. Movies never really worked for him!!!” Trump wrote at the time.
In the Times interview, Clooney raised red flags over the Trump administration’s friction with some media and he also took a shot at Trump’s “man of the people” image.
“All I can say on that subject is: He’s got a star on Hollywood Boulevard. I don’t,” he said.
Clooney added, “The part of this that’s crazy is that he’s the ‘man of the people.’ I cut tobacco for $3 an hour and sold insurance door-to-door and was uninsured for 10 years in my early career.”
