George Clooney says calling for Biden to drop out of 2024 race was his ‘civic duty’ 

Oscar-winning actor George Clooney said calling for former President Joe Biden to withdraw from the 2024 presidential race was his “civic duty,” according to a new interview.

“Well, I don’t know if it was brave,” Clooney told CNN host Jake Tapper Wednesday, about his July 2024  New York Times op-ed on Biden.

“It was a civic duty.”

Clooney argued that it became necessary to write the op-ed – in which he claimed the Biden he met with at a June 2024 fundraiser was not the same man he knew in 2010 or 2020 – after he observed Democrats being untruthful about the then president’s mental and physical decline and his chances of defeating Donald Trump.  

“When I saw people on my side of the street, not telling the truth, I thought that was time,” he said.

Clooney, 63, declared that Democrats had no chance of winning the 2024 presidential election with Biden on the ticket in the op-ed, which was published less than a month after he co-hosted a fundraiser that raised some $30 million for the former president – an event that was overshadowed by Biden freezing up during the event and having to be escorted offstage by former President Barack Obama.

“[T]he one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” Clooney wrote. “None of us can.” 

“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,” he added. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Clooney, a prominent Democrat and major party donor, also demanded that lawmakers and party leaders “stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw” at Biden’s disastrous June 27, 2024, debate against Trump.

“We are not going to win in November with this president,” the actor bluntly said.

The Biden campaign was reportedly tipped off about the op-ed before it was published and unsuccessfully tried to convince the actor to pull it. The 46th president ended his re-election bid weeks after its publication, on July 21, 2024. 

Tapper asked Clooney if people are still “mad” at him over the piece. 

“Some people, sure,” Clonney responded. “It’s okay.” 

“You know, listen, the idea of freedom of speech, you know, the specific idea of it is, you know –  you can’t demand freedom of speech and then say, but don’t say bad things about me,” Clooney continued. “Well, that’s the deal.”

“You have to take a stand if you believe in it, take a stance, stand for it, and then deal with the consequences. That’s the rules.”