George Clooney's NYT op-ed asking Joe Biden to drop out was a 'gut punch', says Karine Jean-Pierre
WASHINGTON, DC: Former White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has criticized actor George Clooney in her new book, 'Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines', for calling on former President Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election.
In July 2024, Clooney wrote a celebrity guest essay in the New York Times describing his sighting of an apparently frail Biden shortly before the election.
Karine Jean-Pierre’s response to George Clooney’s NYT op-ed
Jean-Pierre described her response to reading the article, "When I woke up, the piece was there, splayed across the pages of The New York Times. The headline? 'George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee'. I read it in disbelief.”
In his article, Clooney refleced on a fundraiser he hosted with Biden, saying, ‘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.' He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."
Karine Jean-Pierre called George Clooney's Biden critique a 'gut punch'
Jean-Pierre defined the essay as a "gut punch" to Biden, whose health she still stands on. She mentioned the huge influence the actor's view carried because of his reputation.
“Clooney was an A-list Hollywood celebrity and a self-professed proud Democrat. His opinion was a huge deal and would draw tremendous attention from the media and the public alike,” Jean-Pierre wrote.
She also condemned Democratic Party intraparty pressure to oust Biden, castigating this as a betrayal.
She implied Clooney's public appeal provided fresh momentum to such an endeavor, stating, “After its publication, more and more party leaders said Biden had to go.”
While conceding that Clooney's "concerns weren't completely unjustified, his assessment didn't offer the full context," she felt.
Karine Jean-Pierre recalls attending fundraiser event with Biden
Remembering that she too had gone to the fundraiser which was hosted by Clooney and Biden, Jean-Pierre tried to frame his appearance, “We went through nine time zones. I was tired, and I'm decades younger than Biden, so it was understandable that he might not have been sprinting across a ballroom or at his most electric when addressing the star-studded crowd."
Jean-Pierre insisted she personally saw no evidence of Biden's mental decline and claimed the Democratic party eventually pushed him out. She did acknowledge, though, that his showing in the June 2024 debate against Donald Trump was disturbing, “He was hoarse. He kind of looked like he was sick,” she wrote.
That moment, she alleged, was used by upper echelon Democrats already dubious about Biden's chances for re-election to justify the constant questioning.
“Everything that I've been pushing back on - his age, is he fit - like automatically anytime he would sneeze or have a runny nose or something would happen, that would be where the questions would go,” she wrote. In spite of this, she continued to believe in the president's fitness to serve.
Karine Jean-Pierre holds Nancy Pelosi responsible for party 'disloyalty and disunity'
Along with Clooney, Jean-Pierre held high-ranking Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi responsible for what she perceived as party disloyalty and disunity. The title of her book indicates that she has chosen to call herself an Independent, not a Democrat.
The book comes on the heels of previous critical books, one of them co-written by CNN's Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, which accused party members of trying to hide the then-president's cognitive decline.
Tapper and Thompson reported last May that sources indicated, "The President appeared severely diminished, as if he’d aged a decade since Clooney last saw him, in December, 2022."
Likewise, according to her own memoir, Vice President Kamala Harris apparently characterized Biden's plan to run for re-election in 2024 as "reckless" and a threat to her own campaign.
