Joy Behar is pretty heated about George Clooney’s op-ed, asking on Thursday’s episode of The View, “Couldn’t he tell him that in person for God’s sakes, he has to write an op-ed piece?”
In Clooney’s op-ed, he wrote “Joe Biden is a hero; he saved democracy in 2020. We need him to do it again in 2024,” by backing out of the race. He cited Biden’s condition at a fundraiser prior to the debate as the primary grounds for his concerns. Former Barack Obama speech writer Jon Favreau attended the same event, according to a clip of Favreau speaking to CNN as shown during The View episode in question, and shared the same concerns as Clooney.
Nonetheless, Behar, who at 81 is just about six weeks older than Biden, took further issue with the way he expressed those concerns as the conversation wore on: “I’m mad at George Clooney right now,” she said. Co-host Sunny Hostin agreed with Behar that Clooney should have closed ranks and shared his concerns privately. “I don’t like that Geroge Clooney did this,” Hostin said. “I don’t like that George Clooney aired this dirty laundry to the world.”
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The View hosts are divided on the issue. Alyssa Farah Griffin said Clooney, 63, was right to call out Biden about his mental fitness—and publicly, due to time constraints of the impending election. “Why are you mad at him?” she asked Behar, as she made the point that top advisors had made the same point that “the biggest, most prolific democratic fundraiser George Clooney” had made. “The people [that] are gonna decide this election need to hear the case be made of how he could possibly overcome the hurdle that he has.”
“There’s no historic example of someone being behind the margin of error in every single battleground state save one and coming back in three and a half months and winning,” Farah Griffin added. But Behar dug in her heels.
“When you see that these two people, Trump the convicted felon, neck and neck with a man who actually saved the economy...” Behar said.“The World Bank said last month that the U.S. economy under Biden is boosting up the entire global economy right now. Why doesn’t George Clooney mention that in his op-ed piece?”
Of course, by most measures Trump and Biden are no longer “neck and neck” in the race for the presidency with the former president consistently out-polling his successor in polls taken after last month’s debate.
