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

George Clooney is opening up about his decision to urge former President Joe Biden to step down from the 2024 presidential race.

During an interview on CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday, Nov. 2, the actor, 64, spoke about his July 2024 op-ed for The New York Times titled “I Love Joe Biden, but We Need a New Nominee” — and shared that while he has no regrets about urging Biden to exit the race, he felt that the decision to make Kamala Harris the Democratic nominee was a “mistake.”

When asked if he would write the op-ed again, Clooney said, “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.”

“I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record,” the Wolfs actor said. “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.”

“I think it was a mistake, quite honestly,” he added. “But we are where we are. We were gonna lose more House seats, they say. So I don’t know. To not do it would be to say, ‘I’m not gonna tell the truth.’ ”

In the essay, Clooney urged the White House to consider the impact of keeping Biden, then 81, on the ballot and pulled his support for his presidential campaign. The move came just weeks after he co-hosted a reelection fundraiser for the then-president.

“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 at the time, “He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

In the article, Clooney called himself a “lifelong Democrat” and reminded readers that he co-hosted the Biden campaign’s star-studded Hollywood fundraiser only a few weeks earlier, which he noted was the “single largest fundraiser supporting any Democratic candidate ever.”

The op-ed also followed Biden’s frail performance against President Donald Trump in the June 2024 presidential debate.

After Biden officially stepped down from the race on July 21, 2024, Clooney applauded the former president’s decision to drop out as “the most selfless thing that anybody has done since George Washington” at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

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In a statement issued to CNN and shared soon after he dropped out, 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.”

The ER alum also recently reflected on his op-ed during a conversation with CNN‘s Jake Tapper on The Lead, and shared that he felt it was his “civic duty.”

“I don’t know if it was brave,” Clooney told Tapper. “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 of the street not telling the truth, I thought it was time to…”

After Tapper asked Clooney if people were “still mad” at him over the op-ed, he replied, “‘Some people, sure.”

“It’s okay. You know, listen. The idea of freedom of speech, the specific idea of it, is you can’t demand freedom of speech but don’t say bad things about me. That’s the deal,” Clooney said. “You have to take a stand. If you believe in it, take a stand. Stand for it. Then deal with the consequences. That’s the rules.”