George Clooney spoke out again on the 2024 presidential election while sitting with Seth Doane on “CBS News Sunday Morning,” positing that it was a “mistake” for Vice President Kamala Harris to run and that there should have been a primary to determine a replacement for Joe Biden.
“We had a chance. I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary. Let’s battle-test this quickly and get it up and going,” the “Jay Kelly” star said Sunday. “I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record. It’s very hard to do if the point of running is to say, ‘I’m not that person.’”
“It’s hard to do, and so she was given a very tough task,” he continued. “I think it was a mistake, quite honestly. But, we are where we are. We were gonna lose more House seats, they say. So, I don’t know. To not do it would be to say, ‘I’m not gonna tell the truth.’”
The topic of Harris came up after Clooney was asked about his July 2024 op-ed in the New York Times in which he questioned President Joe Biden’s ability to run for re-election. The piece sparked outcry from the former president’s son, Hunter Biden, who expressed frustration.
Clooney admitted he “saw” that Hunter reacted, but decided against spending “a lot of time debunking many of the things he said.”
Watch the full extended interview below:
“Many of the things he said were just outright lies. Obama didn’t put me up to it. It wasn’t my fundraiser. It wasn’t my fundraiser — all the things,” he explained. “But the reality is, I don’t think looking backwards like that is helpful to anyone, particularly to him. I don’t think it’s helpful for the Democratic Party. So I’m just going to wish him well on his ongoing recovery, and I hope he does well and just leave it at that. I have many personal opinions about it, but I don’t find it to be helpful to have a public spat with him.”
Clooney previously downplayed the impact of the op-ed while speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper this summer. ““I don’t know if it was brave. It was a civic duty,” Clooney said in July. “I’m a Democrat in Kentucky, so I get it.”
