George Clooney calls for Biden to step aside weeks after hosting $28m fundraiser

George Clooney, who just weeks ago headlined a star-studded fundraiser that raked in $28m for president Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, has penned an emotional op-ed telling his “friend” in no uncertain terms to take himself out of the 2024 presidential race.

The actor, one of Biden’s most high-profile supporters, said that he had witnessed first-hand a change in the 81-year-old, as he accused party leaders of essentially gaslighting the public by blaming the president’s abysmal debate performance against Donald 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.”

The actor’s blunt assessment comes at a critical time for Biden, who faces calls from more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers to bow out before it’s too late. The editorial board of The New York Times has also urged Biden to step aside in two separate op-eds, saying he has “continued to appear as a man in decline” in the wake of the debate.

On Wednesday morning, the former House speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested that Biden could still change his mind about his re-election bid, as she refused to say whether she personally felt that the president should press on with his campaign.

“It’s up to the president to [decide] if he’s going to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision because time is running short,” she insisted.

Clooney, who is a longtime supporter of the Democratic Party, and whose