Actor George Clooney, a major Hollywood fundraiser for Democrats, urged Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 US presidential race. In a damning op-ed in the New York Times, Clooney, who recently co-hosted a star-studded fundraiser for Biden, said the 81-year-old was no longer the same person who won the White House in 2020. Citing Biden’s insipid performance in the recent presidential debate with Republican nominee Donald Trump, Clooney said, “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.” Biden’s shaky performance at the June 27 presidential debate has only reinforced concerns about his age and health as he stumbled over some answers and fumbled on several occasions. The US President has, however, brushed off his poor performance in the debate as a “bad episode”.
“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,” Clooney further said. Clooney said that he loved Biden, but stressed that the Democrats would lose the presidential race as well as any control in Congress with him as the nominee. “This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and Congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private,” wrote Clooney.
The Hollywood actor said that the President had won many battles in his career, “but the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time”. Clooney said the party should pick a new nominee at its August convention but also underlined its pitfalls, “The process will be messy but will wake up voters in the party’s favour”. Biden has repeatedly refused to end his re-election bid and dared his critics to challenge him at the national convention in Chicago next month
