Clooney calls on Biden to end reelection campaign

Actor took to social media to bring up concerns about the president’s age

WASHINGTON:

Actor George Clooney, one of the Democratic Party’s leading fundraisers, on Wednesday made an emotional and heartfelt plea for President Joe Biden to end his faltering reelection campaign. Clooney joined a growing list of public figures calling for Biden, 81, to step aside after his terrible debate performance against Donald Trump last month.

“I love Joe Biden,” Clooney wrote in a New York Times opinion piece. “I consider him a friend, and I believe in him... But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time…This isn’t only my opinion; this is the opinion of every senator and congress member and governor that I’ve spoken with in private.”

A self-described “lifelong Democrat,” Clooney co-hosted a star-studded fundraiser with Biden in Los Angeles only last month featuring former president Barack Obama. “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe Biden of 2010,” Clooney wrote.”He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney said -- a direct challenge to Biden’s claim that his poor debate showing was a one-off.

“The dam has broken” on Democratic lawmakers publicly calling for Biden to withdraw, Clooney said, asking more to come forward. “Top Democrats -- Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi -- and senators, representatives and other candidates who face losing in November need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside.”

The Oscar-winner brushed aside worries that Biden’s exit would create chaos four months before an election in which the Democrats hope to keep Trump from power and did not endorse a replacement candidate. The party should hear from contenders such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Maryland Governor Wes Moore and others, “then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out,” he wrote.