Washington (CNN) — The actor George Clooney, who had been among President Joe Biden’s biggest supporters and donors in Hollywood, called on Biden to bow out of the presidential race on Wednesday, just weeks after he hosted a major fundraiser for his reelection campaign.
“I love Joe Biden,” Clooney wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. “As a senator. As a vice president and as president. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him.”
But, Clooney added, the Biden he saw during the June 15 fundraiser, which also included former President Barack Obama, “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,” Clooney added, referencing Biden’s faltering and disastrous performance at the June 27 presidential debate on CNN.
That statement was a stunning assessment of Biden’s current state from someone who has interacted with the president privately — that the way the president presented himself during that debate, which the White House and Biden campaign have alternatively blamed on a cold and a tiring travel schedule, was not an aberration.
Asked for comment Wednesday, Biden’s campaign pointed toward the letter the president wrote to members of Congress on Monday indicating he would remain in the race.
Clooney’s opinion piece represents the biggest defection against Biden in Hollywood, which the party has long relied on for big-named support and money. It comes as a handful of Democrats in Congress have also publicly demanded Biden step aside due to persistent concerns about his age and mental acuity.
The fundraiser that Clooney headlined raised $28 million for Biden’s reelection campaign, the most for the Democratic Party from a single event in history.
In the opinion piece, Clooney called on key Democrats — naming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — to ask Biden to “voluntarily step aside.”
“We are not going to win in November with this president,” Clooney warned, adding that the lawmakers he has spoken with privately shared this view.
He said the country deserves to hear from other politicians who are seen as potential replacements for Biden on the ticket, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Saying “the dam has broken,” Clooney wrote “we can put our heads in the sand and pray for a miracle in November, or we can speak the truth.”
Although Clooney has been one of Biden’s biggest bundlers, fractures in their relationship began showing before the high-profile fundraiser he hosted for the president. Clooney’s wife, Amal Clooney, is an international human rights lawyer who was among the group of legal experts who asked the International Criminal Court to seek arrest warrants for both Israeli and Hamas leaders due to the continued war between those two factions.
Biden forcefully criticized the ICC’s efforts because of the implication of an equivalence between Israel and Hamas.
Clooney’s opinion piece comes amid the most crucial week of Biden’s reelection campaign, as cracks in the coalition of Democratic support behind Biden continued to grow. At least eight members of Congress from his own party have publicly asked Biden to step down from the ticket.
Clooney isn’t the only prominent Hollywood Democrat who has asked Biden to step down. Rob Reiner, a Biden surrogate who attended a fundraiser alongside Harris after the debate, also called for the president to step aside.
“My friend George Clooney has clearly expressed what many of us have been saying. We love and respect Joe Biden. We acknowledge all he has done for our country. But Democracy is facing an existential threat. We need someone younger to fight back. Joe Biden must step aside,” Reiner said in a post to social media platform X Wednesday in which he linked to Clooney’s op-ed.
Reiner began his calls on Biden to step down earlier this week.
“It’s time to stop [expletive] around. If the Convicted Felon wins, we lose our Democracy. Joe Biden has effectively served US with honor, decency, and dignity. It’s time for Joe Biden to step down,” he wrote Sunday.
Biden is participating in high-stakes meetings with NATO allies on Wednesday and will hold a solo news conference — his first since the debate — on Thursday.
CNN’s Betsy Klein contributed to this report.
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