By Anjali Sharma
WASHINGTON –US actor and filmmaker George Clooney on Monday has said that replacing Joe Biden with Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate against Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential Elections was a mistake.
He has not expressed any regrets about his article urging the former president to make way for his deputy.
Ahead of the US elections, Clooney had written an article in the New York Times, supporting Kamala Harris.
In the article titled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee”, Clooney had suggested that the aging Biden should step aside amid concerns over his mental health.
He had said that while Biden had won many battles, he cannot win one against time. A few days after his article, Biden had announced he would pull out of the race to make way for Harris.
In an interview with CBS, the actor defended his NYT article, said “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,” he said.
Clooney added, there was no primary and Harris took the nomination, eventually losing the election against Trump.
“I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record. 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,” Clooney said.
“I think it was a mistake, quite honestly,” he added.
His remarks came after Joe Biden’s son hunter Biden slammed the actor for exaggerating his father’s health condition.
In a recent interview with a YouTube channel, Hunter, while referring to Clooney, said, “What do you have to do with anything? Why do I have to listen to you?”
Hunter blamed his father’s condition to his schedule and a drug named Ambien which he claimed was given to the former president to treat his sleep problems.
“They give him Ambien to be able to sleep. He gets up on the stage and he looks like he’s a deer in the headlights,” he had said.
