Biden vs. The Clooneys
George Clooney's critical op-ed garnered more attention than any other call for Biden to step aside. Why did it strike such a nerve?
George Clooney’s New York Times op-ed, “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee,” was explosive.
The Hollywood A-Lister and longtime Democratic fundraiser praised the President and his record, but conceded some hard truths that only few insiders have been able to see (and even fewer have publicly acknowledged):
“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 wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
At this point, we know the debate was disastrous. And it’s a turning point in the 2024 election. The Biden campaign could no longer dismiss memes and videos of the president staring off as out-of-context moments or doctored falsities. The president mumbled through questions and lost his place and misspoke. While he could recall policies and international figures, he squabbled with Trump over golf scores. He even gave Trump the opportunity to speak one of the only truths the former president uttered that night: “I really don't know what [Biden] said at the end of that sentence.”
The Biden Campaign immediately tried to contain the fallout and rally support. They shared that the president hadn’t been feeling great (after the debate started) and immediately put him back on the campaign trail.
Behind the scenes, they tried to dissuade influential voices from suggesting (verbalizing?) that the President’s time was up.
According to the New York Times, the movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg, who also works for the Biden Campaign and maintains its Hollywood liaisons, had tried to get Clooney to not write the essay.
But Democratic strategists around the country had already called on Biden to remove himself from the 2024 ticket. Even former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had opened the door to him stepping down during an MSNBC interview. What was it about George Clooney that struck such a nerve with the Biden camp?
When you thing of George Clooney, you think Hollywood. His name has staying power with generations across the spectrum. But the leading man and award-winning director has influence not just in Hollywood, but Washington.
As he notes in the op-ed, he rallies Hollywood’s elite and the money that they bring: “I have led some of the biggest fund-raisers in my party’s history. Barack Obama in 2012. Hillary Clinton in 2016. Joe Biden in 2020. Last month I co-hosted the single largest fund-raiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever, for President Biden’s re-election.”
Beyond the fundraising, Clooney has used his platform to shed light on humanitarian issues for nearly two decades. He was active in ending the Conflict in Darfur in the early 2000s, even getting arrested for protesting outside of its embassy. He has done years of work to recognize the Armenian genocide and has donated thousands to anti-gun initiatives.
And perhaps the Hollywood star would be further cemented in the humanitarian sphere after it was (ironically) the human rights lawyer that would get Hollywood’s longtime bachelor, who swore-off ever marrying again, to get hitched.
Amal Alamuddin, the Lebanese-born, British lawyer, had an esteemed career in international law when she met George Clooney. She represented Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine. She helped investigate war crimes around the world and brought a lawsuit on behalf of 400 Yazidi women claiming genocide in Iraq and Syria.
And when George and Amal got married, they were a power couple in both spaces. They started a foundation, The Clooney Foundation for Justice. Part of their mission statement reads: “We are actively investigating war crimes in Ukraine, monitoring sham trials targeting women and journalists and fighting against a global trend of authoritarianism that seeks to punish those who speak truth to power.”
Amal Clooney punched so far above George’s weight in humanitarian field, that Tina Fey and Amy Poehler used it as a punchline at the 2015 Golden Globes:
“George Clooney married Amal Alamuddin this year. Amal is a human rights lawyer who worked on the Enron case, was an advisor to Kofi Annan regarding Syria, and was selected to a three-person U.N. Commission investigating rules of war violations in the Gaza Strip. So tonight, her husband is getting a lifetime achievement award.”
And it was, in part, that experience that got attention of lead investigators at the Hague following the Israel-Hamas war. In the beginning of 2024, she was asked by the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court to help investigate war crimes in Israel and Gaza. The conflict, which began after Hamas militants invaded Israel and killed the largest number of Jews since the Holocaust, had caused international uproar. In the months that followed, Israel unleashed a barrage of attacks against the strip of land. Millions of people were uprooted. The Lancet estimates that 186,000 people, or 8% of the territory, was killed - including tens of thousands of children.
And in May, the ICC team, including Amal Clooney, found enough evidence of war crimes from both sides that they brought charges.
“Today, the prosecutor has taken a historic step to ensure justice for the victims in Israel and Palestine by issuing applications for five arrest warrants alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity by senior Hamas and Israeli leaders. These include applications for a warrant of arrest against the political and military commanders of Hamas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,” the investigators wrote in an op-ed.
These charges irked the Biden Administration (though it should be noted that the U.S. is not a party in the ICC). Biden was standing by Israel, even though he disagreed with the approach and low support for Netanyahu waned further.
It was precisely this incident that the Biden Campaign pinned the Clooney fallout on. In June, George had reportedly complained to the White House after President Biden bristled the ICC findings against Netanyahu. So when George spoke out against Biden’s re-election bid, they pointed to this tiff. The Guardian writes:
This week, the Biden-Harris campaign attempted to blame Clooney’s letter on “pre-existing tensions” – hinting at the ICC dust-up. A Hollywood producer familiar with the couple told the Observer that the White House’s explanation for the letter was “bullshit” and the lawyer had been smeared because her work is on human rights irrespective of political division.
Despite this difference of opinion, Biden still teamed-up with George Clooney for a $30 million fundraiser weeks after the ICC charges were dropped. If any tensions were there, they were squashed or pushed aside for donations… until the CNN debate in late June.
George’s op-ed was so scarring to the Biden campaign because of his influence. Fans who scroll social media and have no interest in politics couldn’t miss the headlines. The man who had connections to the stars and the donors gave an opening for other heavy-hitters to speak out.
Some have criticized Clooney (and other Biden naysayers) as self-important and out-of-touch with the rest of the country; that they are underestimating the danger of what Trump would do if he entered the White House for a second term.
Ashley Allison, the National Coalitions Director for the Biden-Harris 2020 Campaign appeared on CNN and said she was “annoyed” and “furious” that people “who are not the backbone of the Democratic Party” are calling on Biden to step down.
“I’m going to do every single thing I can to defeat Donald Trump because as a Black woman living in this country that has less Constitutional rights from the day that I was born 42 years ago, I refuse to live under Donald Trump’s reign again. I refuse to risk our democracy and Joe Biden is the person right now who is able to defeat him. And so when people are saying ‘do something to prove you have the command of the knowledge’ and you stand up and you call on 10 reporters and you answer 19 questions for 59 minutes then I ask you, when you say he must stand down, what is the test that he must prove over and over again? Because then it feels like you as a person who is calling him to step down is being disingenuous… But for people who are living under the fear of a possible dictator to take over this country, I just ask you, as a Democratic Party … to get it to together for the people you are asked to represent. There is too much at stake.”
Perhaps it was because there are so many spaces that Clooney has influence that the Biden campaign was perturbed. Hollywood, big donors, human rights - he sits in each and when he opens his mouth, he gains support and perhaps emboldens others to do just that. And what’s more is the question of who Clooney might be speaking as a proxy for.
According to Politico, George Clooney reached out to Barack Obama ahead of publishing the letter… and the former president didn’t try to prevent him from publishing the scathing op-ed.
Is Biden’s former running mate using George as a proxy? As a way to express an opinion while remaining quiet? And is he using his post-White House Hollywood connections to express what he can’t say without upsetting the Democratic establishment?
There’s no question that the Biden Campaign is in crisis mode. Perhaps unfollowing Hollywood’s closest thing to royalty on Twitter after he pens a NYT op-ed says how threatening George’s opinion really is.