George Clooney isn’t staying quiet after Hunter Biden lashed out at him over his role in pushing President Joe Biden to step aside from the 2024 race.
In an interview on CBS’s Sunday Morning, the 64-year-old actor responded to Hunter’s profanity-filled comments that aired earlier this year. Hunter, 55, had gone off on Clooney during a July interview with Andrew Callaghan on Channel 5, blasting him for writing a New York Times op-ed urging President Biden not to seek re-election.
“F— you. What do you have to do with f—ing anything? Why do I have to f—ing listen to you?” Hunter said at the time. “What right do you have to step on a man who’s given 52 years of his f—ing life to the service of this country and decide that you, George Clooney, are going to take out basically a full-page ad in the f—ing New York Times to undermine the president…”
Clooney, who has stood by his decision to write the op-ed as a matter of “civic duty,” pushed back during his sit-down with CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Seth Doane.
“I could spend a lot of time debunking many of the things [Hunter] said because many of the things he said were just outright lies,” Clooney said. “Obama didn’t put me up to it, it wasn’t my fundraiser—it was my fundraiser, all the things.”
Still, Clooney made it clear he didn’t plan to keep the feud going. “The reality is 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, and so I’m just gonna wish him well on his ongoing recovery and I hope he does well and just leave it at that,” he said. “I have many personal opinions about it, but I don’t find it to be helpful to have a public spat with him.”
In his July rant, Hunter suggested that “Obama people” had given Clooney “the blessing” to write the op-ed and accused him of misrepresenting a Hollywood fundraiser for Biden in June 2024. Reports from that event claimed the president didn’t recognize Clooney, one of Hollywood’s biggest Democratic fundraisers, but Hunter pushed back.
“George Clooney wasn’t really the host, he was the entertainment, I guess,” Hunter said, adding that his father did recognize the two-time Oscar winner.
Clooney again defended both his op-ed and his stance on Biden’s decision to hand the Democratic nomination to then–Vice President Kamala Harris. He called that move a mistake.
“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,” Clooney said. “I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record and 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. But, we are where we are.”
While Hunter’s outburst made headlines for its harsh language, Clooney’s measured response struck a more diplomatic tone — acknowledging the tension but choosing to focus on moving forward.