While many left-wing media outlets and leaders are calling for President Joe Biden to end his re-election bid after his dreadful showing in the first presidential debate on June 27, a new report indicates not even former President Barack Obama is not stepping up to defend him.
On Thursday, Politico reported Hollywood star George Clooney reached out to Obama — under whom Biden served as vice president — beforehand for the green light on the actor’s The New York Times Op-Ed on Wednesday calling on Biden to drop out of the presidential race.
Obama did not advise Clooney in any way on the matter, according to Politico.
He stood aside.
In his piece, Clooney wrote, “It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Clooney, along with Obama, actress Julia Roberts and late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, were together for a fundraiser just three weeks ago at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles.
The actor is a major Democratic donor, and Politico reported that he and Obama are on good terms.
While Clooney expressed his admiration for Biden in his Op-Ed, he said the prospect of his party’s victory was bleak should the president remain on the ticket.
He wrote that “the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was … the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Do you think Biden is mentally fit?
“Was he tired? Yes. A cold? Maybe,” Clooney wrote. “But our party leaders need to stop telling us that 51 million people didn’t see what we just saw. We’re all so terrified by the prospect of a second Trump term that we’ve opted to ignore every warning sign,”
“This is about age. Nothing more,” he said. “But also nothing that can be reversed. We are not going to win in November with this president.”
According to Politico, “While Obama did not encourage or advise Clooney to say what he said, he also didn’t object to it, we’re told from people familiar with their exchange.”
“The lack of pushback is an eye-popping revelation given that the former president was one of the first big voices defending Biden following his abysmal debate performance (while many of his former aides have been some of the incumbent’s biggest critics),” the report said.
The former president’s silence is incredibly telling.
After serving eight years as Obama’s vice president, Biden often makes a point to invoke him when speaking of his time in that role and all he believes the two accomplished together.
He has always tried to communicate an enduring close relationship between the two men.
While Obama has not denounced his former vice president or endorsed an alternative, he chose not to protect Biden, according to Politico.
He was aware of Clooney’s piece and let the president take the hit.
The Biden campaign is unquestionably at odds with the Democratic Party over the candidate, but without Obama to defend him, where does this truly leave Biden?
The Democratic National Convention — where the party will formally choose its candidate — is just over a month away in Chicago.
If Biden doesn’t have the former president and party patriarch in his corner, the odds are overwhelmingly against him.
