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“I totally agree with the current president. We have to make America great again. We’ll start in November.”
Clooney appeared to be referencing the US midterm elections, during which all 435 seats in the US House of Representatives and a third of the Senate will be up for a vote, potentially giving the Democrats the opportunity to take control of the House once more.
Earlier war of words
The current spat between Cooney and Trump follows an earlier incident last year in which Clooney made remarks about the democratic role of the media on an episode of US network CBS’ 60 Minutes during an interview to promote the stage version of his and Grant Heslov’s 2005 film, Good Night, and Good Luck.
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In the stage version, Clooney plays veteran CBS journalist Edward Murrow, who took on influential US senator Joseph McCarthy, at the height of the “red scare” during the 1950s.
“When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed,” Clooney told 60 Minutes. “Governments don’t like the freedom of the press. They never have.”
Trump responded on Truth Social asking why CBS would do a “puff piece” on “a second-rate movie ‘star’ and failed political pundit”.
Clooney then said he was not fazed.
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“I don’t care. I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time. My job is not to please the president of the United States. My job is to try and tell the truth when I can and when I have the opportunity.”
About that time, CBS was settling a lawsuit with Trump amid its parent company Paramount’s bid to be acquired by Sundance, which was later approved.
This week in a new Variety interview to promote his film Jay Kelly, Clooney took aim at CBS and the US ABC network for settling lawsuits brought by the president.
“If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go f— yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country,” Clooney told Variety.
