George Clooney calls on Biden to drop out of the race

• George Clooney is calling on President Joe Biden to step down.
• Clooney said Biden has clearly lost a step and his struggles were evident during a fundraiser.
• Biden has insisted he's not going anywhere.

Hollywood superstar George Clooney said Wednesday that it was time for President Joe Biden to drop out of the presidential race, after Biden's disastrous debate performance and a fundraiser the actor and filmmaker co-hosted for Biden in June.

"It's devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe 'big F-ing deal' Biden of 2010," Clooney wrote in a New York Times op-ed.

"He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."

The June event was a star-studded fundraiser in Los Angeles featuring former President Barack Obama, actress Julia Roberts and comedian Jimmy Kimmel. The evening raised more than $30 million for Biden and his larger political operation, according to NBC News.

Biden's fumbling debate performance opposite former President Donald Trump was on June 27, nearly two weeks after the fundraiser in Los Angeles.

Clooney's op-ed was published Wednesday, nearly two weeks after the disastrous debate, and the same day former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., refused to explicitly endorse Biden as the nominee.

"We are not going to win in November with this president," wrote Clooney. "On top of that, we won't win the House, and we're going to lose the Senate. 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. Every single one, irrespective of what he or she is saying publicly."

Reached for comment, a Biden campaign spokesman pointed CNBC to the