George Clooney is OK with telling President Joe Biden to get out of the White House race last year.
And he’s OK if people continue to hate on him for it.
Sitting down with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Clooney defended his New York Times op-ed that called on Biden to get out of the 2024 race against Donald Trump.
The opinion piece came after Biden’s disastrous debate performance against Trump last June.
Clooney demurred when Tapper said that many people felt that writing the op-ed was “brave.”
“I don’t know if it was brave,” Clooney laughed, per the Daily Beast. “It was a civic duty because I found that people on my side of the street, you know I’m a Democrat in Kentucky so I get it, when I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth I thought that was time to…”
“Are people still mad at you for that?” Tapper interjected.
Clooney responded, “Some people, sure. That’s OK, you know, listen the idea of freedom of speech—the specific idea of it is—you can’t demand freedom of speech and then say, ‘But don’t say bad things about me.’”
Clooney went on: “That’s the deal, you have to take your stand if you believe in it. Take a stand, stand for it and then deal with the consequences.”
The Oscar winner said, “That’s the rules, so when people criticize me—they criticized me for my stance against the war 20 years ago, people picketed my movies and they put me on a deck of cards—I have to take that, that’s fair.”
Trump last month re-ignited his longtime feud with Clooney by slamming the actor with a four-word diss.
And it was reported that Clooney launched into a foul-mouthed tirade last year after “Morning Joe” co-host Mika Brzezinski suggested on the air that former President Barack Obama was actually behind the Clooney op-ed.
