Et tu, Brute?
Those were supposedly the words of Julius Caesar when one of his dearest friends joined in the job that killed him. In this case, Brute is Barack Obama and George Clooney and Caesar is President Biden.
George Clooney published an opinion piece in the New York Times admitting that President Biden is too old and tired to run for reelection. The piece, titled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee” declared that “the one battle [Biden] cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. 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.”
This comes just weeks after Clooney hosted a fundraiser for the President that brought in $30 million for him. I’d be pretty miffed if I’d donated to Clooney’s fundraiser only to have him turn on the candidate he asked me to donate for, wouldn’t you?
Now the New York Post reports that former President Obama knew about this article but did not try to dissuade the actor. “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,” according to Politico.
Who cares about celebrity politics, right? What is noteworthy here is how many Brutes are in politics at all.
President Biden will hold his “big boy” press conference today so maybe that will change some minds.
