(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) It’s fair to say that the relationship between President Joe Biden and his Hollywood donor George Clooney wasn’t all sunshine and roses.
On Wednesday, the White House hit back at Clooney after the Hollywood actor penned an op-ed for the New York Times calling for Biden’s exit from the 2024 presidential race.
In June, The two were seen together at a multi-million-dollar fundraiser for the Biden campaign in Los Angeles. In the op-ed, Clooney admitted to witnessing a weak and aging Biden at the event.
However, according to CNN on Wednesday, the Biden White House is now suggesting that Clooney appeared diminished at the fundraiser, contrasting Biden’s hours-long attendance with Clooney’s early departure.
A Biden official said, “George Clooney left three hours before the president,” according to CNN reporter Kayla Tausche in a segment with anchor Jake Tapper.
“Clearly, the gloves are off,” Tausche told Tapper.
Tapper, seemingly baffled by the White House’s line of defense, asked the reporter to clarify the point of such claims. “What does that mean that George left early?” he asked.
“The point to that is that Biden’s stamina is better than Clooney’s and Clooney didn’t have eyes on the entire event. That’s the response to the Clooney op-ed,” Taushe added.
The Biden campaign is responding to George Clooney’s op-ed by telling reporters on background that Clooney left the fundraiser three hours before Biden did. @kaylatausche tells @jaketapper the comment is to suggest that Biden has more stamina than Clooney and that he wasn’t… pic.twitter.com/awIMRJ04SB
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 10, 2024
The White House’s odd pushback came after Clooney joined a growing chorus of Democrats begging Biden to step down as the presumptive nominee for president.
Fueling Democrats’ concerns is that Biden is too diminished to defeat former President Donald Trump’s popular campaign. Biden’s cognitive decline, known for years among Republicans, was on full display during the CNN presidential debate.
“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,” Clooney wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Tellingly, the actor’s admission that Biden appeared diminished during the fundraiser comes after the legacy media and the White House accused Republicans of spreading “cheap fake” videos of Biden looking confused during the event.
Concluding the op-ed, Clooney wrote, “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024.”
So far, these op-eds and public outcries have been unsuccessful, as the scandal-plagued president has declared that only the “Lord Almighty” could force him out of the race.
