Former US President Barack Obama was given a heads-up but didn’t object to actor George Clooney’s bombshell call for President Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, a new report says.
Clooney had called Obama in advance to warn him he was going to make the call in an op-ed published in the New York Times on Wednesday, July 10, sources told Politico.
The ex-president didn’t encourage Clooney to make the remarks, but didn’t try to stop him, either, the sources added.
Clooney, who co-hosted a Biden fundraiser in Los Angeles that brought in some $30 million less than a month earlier, had declared in the piece that the Democratic incumbent “cannot win” following his train-wreck debate performance.
“It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” Clooney said.
“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Clooney and Obama, who are friendly, both attended the fundraiser.
Obama’s team declined to comment on the claims that he didn’t push back on Clooney’s remarks.