George Clooney was one of the loudest voices calling for former President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 election. In a recent interview with The Times of London, the actor said that pushing Biden out of the race was a “mistake.”
Speaking to the outlet in a joint interview with Adam Sandler, the “Jay Kelly” star said former Vice President Kamala Harris was left with too steep a hill to climb.
“She was given a very tough task,” he said.
Following Harris’ loss, the Democrats are left with no easy answers for their next presidential candidate. The prominent Democratic Party booster balked at predicting the field for 2028.
“Honestly, the next election is three years away, and if you look at the election cycles, two years from when Bill Clinton won, we thought Paul Tsongas was going to be the nominee,” he said. “We thought it would be Hillary when Barack Obama won, so we’re far away from having to home in on who could run for the Democratic Party — we’ll see, we’ll wait.”
The actor told the Times that partisan politics in the United States obscured common desires.
“Look, it’s an interesting time in my country, but most people, right and left, want the same. They want a job with dignity, health for themselves and their family,” he said. “And so whoever runs has to be able to articulate the common ground, because division is getting us nowhere.”
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Clooney led the charge to end Biden’s presidential campaign following a concerning performance in a head-to-head debate with Donald Trump. In an op-ed that ran in the New York Times, Clooney said his personal interactions with Biden made him wonder about the then-president’s mental acuity.
“The Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not…the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney wrote.
Following Biden’s decision to end his campaign, Clooney praised Biden for having the humility to put the country before his pride. He called the move “the most selfless thing anybody’s done since George Washington.”
“All the machinations that got us there, none of that’s gonna be remembered, and it shouldn’t be,” Clooney said at the time. “You know, it’s very hard to let go of power. We know that. We’ve seen it all around the world. And for someone to say, ‘I think there’s a better way forward,’ all the credit goes to him, and that’s really the truth.”
