Clooney hails ‘selfless’ Biden after begging him to quit

George Clooney, whose damning public call damaged Joe Biden’s desperate attempts to stay in the race for re-election, has praised the President for dropping out.

George Clooney urged Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race in July.

George Clooney, whose damning newspaper article badly damaged Joe Biden’s desperate attempts to stay in the race for re-election, has praised the president for dropping out.

In June Biden, 81, was reeling from the fallout of his disastrous televised debate against Donald Trump but had insisted that he would remain the Democratic candidate.

Clooney’s intervention in The New York Times in July, demanding that the president drop out, increased the pressure on Biden when many party heavyweights were reluctant to voice their concerns publicly.

The actor wrote that the president was a shadow of his former self. The timing was particularly crippling for Biden, who had attended a fundraiser in California with Clooney the previous month.

Under intense pressure from Democrats in Congress, Biden announced 11 days later that he would not run for re-election.

Clooney has now praised Biden for being selfless, and likened him to George Washington, who set the two-term precedent when he decided against standing for a third time.

“The person who should be applauded is the president, who has done the most selfless thing a president has done since George Washington,” Clooney told a press conference at the Venice Film Festival. “What should be remembered is the selfless act of someone who – it’s very hard to let go of power, we know that, we’ve seen it all over the world – and for someone to say, ‘I think there’s a better path forward’, all the credit goes to him. That’s really the truth … I’m just very proud of where we are in the state of the world right now.”

Clooney is a lifelong Democrat who has lent his support to presidential candidates including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Biden and now Kamala Harris. In his op-ed, he wrote that Biden had suffered a serious mental and physical decline and that it was necessary for him to step aside to save American democracy.

Clooney, US President Joe Biden, Julia Roberts and former US president Barack Obama in June. Picture: Supplied

“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser 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.”

Donald Trump, who was keen at the time to keep Biden in the race as polls suggested he held a significant advantage over the ailing president, condemned Clooney.

He wrote on Truth Social: “What does Clooney know about anything? … Crooked Joe Biden didn’t save our democracy, he brought our Democracy to its knees.”

Clooney was in Venice to promote his latest film, Wolfs, an action-comedy in which he stars alongside Brad Pitt. The pair, who also appeared together in the Oceans heist film series, were reported to have been paid more than dollars 35 million each for Wolfs.

Clooney, however, denied the claim and said their salary was, “millions and millions and millions of dollars less than what was reported’, adding: “And I am only saying that because I think it’s bad for our industry if that’s what people think is the standard bearer for salaries. I think that’s terrible, it’ll make it impossible to make films.”

Wolfs, directed by Jon Watts, was supposed to be released in cinemas; however Apple, which won a bidding war for the film in 2021, announced last month that it would have only a limited run of a week in cinemas in the US. After that it will be made available on Apple’s streaming service – a blow to proponents of the theatrical experience.

The Times