Liberal actor George Clooney recently pledged his support for Vice President Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic Party after President Biden announced last weekend that he would be dropping out of the 2024 race. Clooney praised Harris, suggesting she would lead a “historic” campaign in her bid to defeat former President Donald Trump later this year.
Earlier this month, Clooney published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for President Biden to step down, echoing the pervasive sentiment throughout the party after the disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump late last month. However, before Biden’s debate debacle, Clooney was hosting fundraisers for the president.
Clooney endorsed Kamala Harris to lead the Democratic Party in a “historic quest” while suggesting Biden is “saving democracy” in his “true leadership” demonstrated by withdrawing from the race. “President Biden has shown what true leadership is. He’s saving democracy once again. We’re all so excited to do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest,” Clooney said in a statement to CNN earlier this week.
In Clooney’s opinion piece titled, “I love Joe Biden. But we need a new nominee,” the actor expressed his affinity toward the president but maintained that the party must select a new candidate. “As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him,” Clooney stated, illustrating his friendship with Biden.
However, Clooney noted that, even before the poor debate performance in late June, he could tell that the president “was not the Joe “big F-ing deal” Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020.” The actor added, “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.” Biden’s infamous June 27 debate performance appeared to be the final straw for many Democrats.
Last month, The American Tribune reported that Democrats had descended into an “aggressive panic” after the debate, where Biden demonstrated worrisome behavior that indicated a decline in his mental acuity. A CNN panel offered a gloomy outlook for the party after it became evident Democrats had a problem on their hands.
CNN host John King stated, “This was a game-changing debate in the sense that right now as we speak, there is a deep, a wide, and a very aggressive panic in the Democratic Party. It started minutes into the debate and it continues right now. It involves party strategists; it involves elected officials; it involves fundraisers. And they’re having conversations about the president’s performance, which they think was dismal, which they think will hurt other people down the party in the ticket and they’re having conversations about what they should do about it.”
He continued, “Some of those conversations include should we go to the White House and asked the president step aside? Others are, other the conversations are about should prominent Democrats go public with that call. But because they feel this debate was so terrible, they do say in moments in a debate later, the president got better and got his footing. But then at the end, even his closing statement was a little halting.”
Watch Biden’s response when asked about dropping out of the 2024 race:
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