{"id":43174,"date":"2024-07-10T21:23:55","date_gmt":"2024-07-10T21:23:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=43174"},"modified":"2026-07-08T02:22:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T02:22:01","slug":"george-clooney-asked-biden-to-step-aside-to-save-democracy-from-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2024\/07\/10\/george-clooney-asked-biden-to-step-aside-to-save-democracy-from-trump\/","title":{"rendered":"George Clooney asked Biden to step aside to save Democracy from Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Hollywood actor\u00a0George Clooney, one of the Democratic party\u2019s biggest fundraisers, has called on Joe Biden to step aside to save democracy from Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an opinion article in the New York Times, Clooney expressed deep affection for the US president but said that personal interaction with him at a recent fundraising event in Los Angeles \u2013 the Democratic party\u2019s most successful ever, raising more than $30m \u2013 suggested that the stumbling performance in last month\u2019s debate in Atlanta was not an aberration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe \u2018big F-ing deal<\/a>\u2019 Biden of 2010,\u201d the actor and longtime Democratic party member and fundraiser wrote<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe wasn\u2019t even the\u00a0Joe Bidenof 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWas he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe. But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn\u2019t see what we just saw,\u201d he said, referring\u00a0to explanations\u00a0from the White House and Biden himself for his bad debate performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More bluntly, he said explicitly that Biden could not prevail in an electoral rematch with Trump: \u201cWe are not going to win with this president.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stressing that his call was made reluctantly, Clooney paid tribute to the political battles that Biden had won throughout his career but said his age represented an insurmountable adversary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can,\u201d he wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clooney\u2019s plea came as Biden continues\u00a0to insist<\/a>on staying in the race while\u00a0senior Democrats agonise\u00a0about how to apply\u00a0pressure\u00a0on him to change his mind, and serious questions continue over\u00a0Biden\u2019s health\u00a0and viability for re-election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actor called on leading party figures to come off the fence and make the case to Biden, while dismissing as \u201cdisingenuous\u201d the president\u2019s argument \u2013 stated in a letter to\u00a0Democrats\u00a0in Congress this week \u2013 that the party\u2019s membership had already chosen the nominee in the primaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Most of our members of Congress are opting to wait and see if the dam breaks,\u201d he wrote in remarks clearly critical of continuing inaction. \u201cBut the dam has broken. We can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He concluded: \u201cJoe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clooney\u2019s intervention comes weeks after a disagreement with the White House over Biden\u2019s criticism of the international criminal court\u2019s\u00a0move to issue\u00a0an arrest warrant for Israel\u2019s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, over allegations of war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The actor\u2019s wife, Amal Alamuddin Clooney,\u00a0worked on\u00a0the case. Clooney called Steve Ricchetti, the president\u2019s counsel, to complain about\u00a0Biden\u2019s labeling\u00a0the warrant as \u201coutrageous\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Warrants were being sought for the\u00a0arrest of\u00a0Yoav Gallant, Israel\u2019s defense minister, and three leaders of Hamas, which controls Gaza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shortly afterwards, however, Clooney appeared at a huge\u00a0fundraising event\u00a0in Los Angeles for the campaign, which headlined with Biden and Barack Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Hollywood actor\u00a0George Clooney, one of the Democratic party\u2019s biggest fundraisers, has called on Joe Biden to step aside to save democracy from Donald Trump. In an opinion article in the New York Times, Clooney expressed deep affection for the US president but said that personal interaction with him at a recent fundraising event in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":32364,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[10618,9951,11264,6975,6202,160,5178,10387,7960,7711,6693,10507,11399,11606,913,2825,6576,911,8290,9643,2629,827,5930,12634,11338,2490,10954,11211,3095,2471,7123,990,6025,3805,3174,6200,146,184,6348,11331,5251,5761,6571,2982],"class_list":["post-43174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-actor","tag-age","tag-allegations","tag-arrest","tag-atlanta","tag-barack-obama","tag-biden","tag-campaign","tag-case","tag-cold","tag-congress","tag-court","tag-debate","tag-democracy","tag-democratic","tag-democratic-party","tag-democrats","tag-election","tag-fence","tag-fund","tag-gaza","tag-george-clooney","tag-hamas","tag-health","tag-heorge-clooney","tag-hollywood","tag-international","tag-international-criminal-court","tag-israel","tag-joe-biden","tag-los-angeles","tag-new-york","tag-obama","tag-president","tag-prime-minister","tag-race","tag-truth","tag-united-states-president-donald-john-trump-jr","tag-us","tag-us-president","tag-war","tag-war-crimes","tag-white","tag-white-house"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43174"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43175,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43174\/revisions\/43175"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}