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Donald Trump has lashed out at Hollywood star George Clooney after the Democratic mega-donor added his voice to the ongoing calls for President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 White House race.
In a Truth Social rant, the reality TV star turned former president branded Clooney a “fake movie star” and told him to “get out of politics and go back to television”.
“So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act,” Trump fumed.
“He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are. What does Clooney know about anything?
“He uses the Democrat ‘talking point’ that Biden, the WORST President in the history of the United States, has ‘saved our Democracy.’
“No, Crooked Joe was the one who WEAPONIZED Law Enforcement against his political Opponent, who created the most devastating INFLATION in the history of our Country, who Embarrassed our Nation in Afghanistan, and whose crazy Open Border Policy has allowed millions of people to illegally pour into our Country, many from prisons and mental institutions.”
Trump concluded: “Crooked Joe Biden didn’t save our Democracy, he brought our Democracy to its knees. Clooney should get out of politics and go back to television. Movies never really worked for him!!!”
On Wednesday, Clooney became the most high-profile donor and biggest Hollywood name to call on Biden to drop out of the 2024 race – just one month after hosting a $28m fundraiser for the president in Los Angeles.
The actor wrote in an op-ed for The New York Times that he had witnessed first-hand a marked change in Biden of late and accused party leaders of 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***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.”
Trump’s attack on Clooney’s career and demand that he stays out of politics comes despite his own career path involving the TV show The Apprentice and no prior experience in politics before he won the presidency in November 2016.
Clooney’s voice joined a growing chorus of Democratic figures including donors, strategists and, most significantly, at least 13 serving Democratic lawmakers calling for the commander-in-chief to drop out of the race and allow another party candidate to take up the mantle.
The pressure is showing no sign of waning following his nightmare debate performance in Atlanta late last month, at which the 81-year-old cut a frail and incoherent figure, provoking questions about his health and fitness to serve another term in the Oval Office.
While Trump managed to remain uncharacteristically quiet about his rival’s crisis for around a week – instead largely allowing the panic engulfing the Democrats over Biden to play out naturally – he has resumed laying into Biden on the campaign trail.
At his latest rally in Florida on Tuesday, Trump invited Biden to a second face-off “this week” and also challenged him to a game of golf, a contest he predicted could be “bigger than the Ryder Cup or even the Masters.”
His attack on Clooney is something of a throwback to Trump’s Twitter account, when he betrayed a relish for celebrity gossip, commenting gleefully on actress Kristen Stewart’s relationship with Twilight co-star Robert Pattinson and entering into feuds with the likes of Bette Midler, Meryl Streep and Debra Messing on a regular basis.
More recently, this May, Trump laid into Robert De Niro when the Taxi Driver and Raging Bull actor turned up outside of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse in New York to denounce the former president during his hush money trial.
