George Clooney Says Kamala Harris’ Presidential Campaign Was a ‘Mistake,’ but He Doesn’t Regret Writing Biden Op-Ed

George Clooney is speaking candidly about his decision to urge former President Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 presidential race — and why he still stands by that choice.

In a CBS Sunday Morning interview on Nov. 2, the 64-year-old actor discussed his July 2024 New York Times op-ed, titled “I Love Joe Biden, but We Need a New Nominee.” Clooney said he has no regrets about calling for Biden’s withdrawal but admitted he believes naming Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee was a “mistake.”

When asked if he would write the piece again, Clooney replied, “Yes. We had a chance. 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 added that Harris faced an especially difficult path: “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 she was given a very tough task. I think it was a mistake, quite honestly. But we are where we are. To not do it would be to say, ‘I’m not gonna tell the truth.’”

In his New York Times essay, Clooney urged the White House to reconsider keeping Biden, then 81, on the ballot and withdrew his personal support for the campaign. The op-ed followed only weeks after he co-hosted a major fundraiser for the president’s reelection bid.

“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—— deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020,” Clooney wrote. “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Calling himself a “lifelong Democrat,” Clooney pointed out that the star-studded fundraiser he co-hosted was “the single largest fundraiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever.” His commentary came soon after Biden’s unsteady performance against Donald Trump in the June 2024 debate.

After Biden officially stepped down from the race on July 21, 2024, Clooney praised the decision as “the most selfless thing that anybody has done since George Washington” during remarks at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

In a statement to CNN shortly afterward, Clooney said: “President Biden has shown what true leadership is. He’s saving democracy once again. We’re all so excited to do whatever we can to support Vice President Harris in her historic quest.”

Clooney also reflected on the op-ed in a conversation with CNN’s Jake Tapper on The Lead, calling it his “civic duty.”

“I don’t know if it was brave,” he said. “It was a civic duty because I found that people on my side of the street — I’m a Democrat, I was a Democrat in Kentucky so I get it — when I saw people on my side not telling the truth, I thought it was time to.”

When Tapper asked whether people were still angry at him over the essay, Clooney answered, “Some people, sure. It’s okay. The idea of freedom of speech — you can’t demand it and then say, ‘but don’t say bad things about me.’ You have to take a stand. If you believe in it, stand for it, and then deal with the consequences. That’s the rule.”