George Clooney says it was a ‘mistake’ to replace Biden with Kamala Harris without primary

Actor says former vice president was given ‘very tough task’ to challenge Donald Trump

George Clooney said he did not regret writing an article criticising Joe Biden, adding that it was a “mistake” for Kamala Harris to replace the former president in the 2024 election without a primary.

In an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning, Clooney was asked if he would write his New York Times op-ed again and the actor said: “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.”

“I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record,” he said, referring to Biden’s vice president.

“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. 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’.”

In July 2024, Clooney wrote a much-discussed article urging Biden to step aside so the Democrats could pick a new nominee to take on Donald Trump in that year’s election.

The actor, one of Biden’s most high-profile supporters, said he had witnessed first-hand a change in the ageing president as he accused party leaders of essentially gaslighting the public by blaming his abysmal debate performance against Trump on the fact that he was suffering from a cold and was exhausted by his busy travel schedule.

“The one battle he cannot win is the fight against time,” Clooney wrote. “None of us can. 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***ng deal’ Biden of 2010. He was not even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

George Clooney said it was a ‘mistake’ for Kamala Harris to replace Joe Biden as Democratic Party candidate in the 2024 election without a primary (Getty)

Biden’s performance in that June presidential debate alarmed voters on all sides of the political spectrum and prompted fears among Democrats that the party was preparing to hand the election over to Republicans.

Multiple Democrats called on Biden to drop out of the presidential race, which he soon did.

Harris, his vice president and running mate, ascended to the top of the ticket after Democratic Party officials shot down the idea of a last-minute primary election to choose a new nominee.

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In May this year, Biden's post-presidential office announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and that it had spread to his bones.

The former president’s son, Hunter Biden, had responded to Clooney’s op-ed with an expletive-filled three-hour rant against the Hollywood megastar in an interview with Andrew Callaghan, an independent journalist and former host of the podcast All Gas No Brakes.

“F*** you. What do you have to do with f***ing anything?” he said. “Why do I have to f***ing listen to you? What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his f***ing life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full page ad in the fucking New York Times to undermine the president at a time in which, by the way, what do people care about the most?”

Asked whether he had seen Hunter’s response to his article, Clooney replied: “Yeah, I saw it.”

“I could spend a lot of time debunking many of the things he said, but the reality is, I don’t think looking backwards like that’s helpful to anyone. Particularly to him. I don’t think it is helpful to the Democratic party,” the Ocean’s Eleven star said. “So I am 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.”

In April, Clooney said it was his “civic duty” to call on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race, after Jake Tapper of CNN suggested the actor’s essay was “brave”.