George Clooney is looking back on the “mistake” Democrats made in the 2024 election.
During an interview on “CBS Sunday Morning,” the “Jay Kelly” star, who wrote a New York Times op-ed in 2024 calling on Democrats to replace Joe Biden as their presidential nominee, reflected on former Vice President Kamala Harris’ election loss to President Donald Trump.
Clooney told CBS that he wishes Democrats would have had a competitive primary to decide on the best candidate to replace Biden, rather than quickly anointing Harris as his successor.
“I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary,” Clooney said. “‘Let’s battle test this quickly and get it up and going.’ I think the mistake with it being Kamala is that she had to run against her own record. 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 added, “I think it was a mistake, quite honestly. But we are where we are.”
George Clooney attends the AFI opening night premiere of “Jay Kelly” at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California on Oct. 23, 2025.
In a New York Times essay published in July 2024, Clooney said he personally witnessed Biden’s cognitive decline at a fundraiser and argued that Democrats were “not going to win in November with this president.” In the piece, the actor suggested that if Biden were to drop out of the 2024 race, “a group of several strong Democrats” could step forward “and tell us why they’re best qualified” to be the nominee.
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“Let’s hear from Wes Moore and Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer and Gavin Newsom and Andy Beshear and J.B. Pritzker and others,” Clooney wrote. “Let’s agree that the candidates not attack one another but, in the short time we have, focus on what will make this country soar. Then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out.”
Biden ultimately dropped out of the presidential race later that month. But after Biden endorsed Harris as his successor, the Democratic Party quickly rallied around her as his replacement in the race. Just one day after Biden ended his campaign, Harris had secured the support of enough delegates needed to become the nominee.
While speaking on “CBS Sunday Morning,” Clooney also responded after Hunter Biden slammed the actor for his New York Times op-ed in an expletive-laden rant. Appearing on “Channel 5 with Andrew Callaghan,” the president’s 55-year-old son slammed Clooney for undermining his father with the essay, asking the actor, “What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his … life to the service of this country?”
George Clooney arrives for the 78th Annual Tony Awards “Meet the Nominees” event in New York City on May 8, 2025.
Clooney told CBS he could “spend a lot of time debunking” the “outright lies” that Hunter Biden said about him, including the claim that former President Barack Obama told him to write the essay. “Obama didn’t put me up to it,” Clooney said.
But the “Ocean’s Eleven” star added, “I don’t think looking backwards like that is helpful to anyone, particularly to him. I don’t think it’s helpful for the Democratic Party.”
Clooney has previously defended publishing his New York Times essay in the wake of Harris’ 2024 election loss. In April, he told CNN it was his “civic duty” to write the piece.
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On “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in February, Clooney reacted to Trump’s election win, saying he has the same attitude about the Democrats’ loss that he encourages his son to have when he loses games of chess.
“He gets upset, and I (tell him), listen, you shake the guy’s hand, you say, ‘Good game, I’ll get you next time,'” Clooney said. “You’ve got to live by those rules, which is, ‘Alright, good. Good for you. Go. I hope you do well, because our country needs it, and then we’ll meet you in three-and-a-half years and see where we go next.'”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: George Clooney says Kamala Harris 2024 campaign was a ‘mistake’
