When George Clooney dropped a bombshell op-ed in The New York Times last July calling on Joe Biden to end his presidential run, he cited his interactions with the president at a starry fundraiser the month prior as cause for concern.
Well, now we know what those interactions entailed thanks to new reporting in the forthcoming book Original Sin from CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thomspon. The then-81 year old allegedly didn’t recognize the Academy Award winner at the event, which left the actor “shaken to his core.”
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by the hosts of The Fifth Column – Kmele Foster, Michael Moynihan, and Matt Welch – to discuss the revelation and why it is time for a formal investigation into the Biden health cover-up.
Biden Forgets Cooney
As you may recall, Clooney found himself in a media firestorm last July after he penned an op-ed for the Times urging Biden to step aside. “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 wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
Tapper and Thompson are putting some meat on the bone of what exactly happened at that glitzy fundraiser, which brought in some $30 million for the Biden campaign. The New Yorker published an excerpt of the book Tuesday that details the “fateful event last summer” where “Barack Obama, George Clooney, and others were stunned by Biden’s weakness and confusion.”
According to the book, Biden and Clooney’s relationship dates back to September 2001 after the actor spoke out against the genocide in Darfur. “By the time the 2024 presidential race had begun, the actor had known Biden for decades and had known him well for fifteen years,” the authors write. “In February, 2024, Clooney had thought the special counsel Robert Hur’s report, which called Biden an ‘elderly man with a poor memory,’ mean-spirited. And, when Biden gave a rousing State of the Union address in March, Clooney thought, Way to go, Mr. President. He had helped him get elected in 2020 and was happy to do so again.”
Clooney agreed to co-host a June 15 fundraiser in Hollywood with Julia Roberts at the request of Democrat megadonor Jeffery Katzenberg. There were plenty of scheduling and logistical issues, but it was ultimately decided that “Jimmy Kimmel would interview Biden and Barack Obama onstage” and “all Clooney and Roberts needed to do was pose for photos with the big donors before the event, then open the show. Afterward, they could fly to their sets, and, God willing, another fund-raising record would be set.”
Needless to say, the night did not run that smoothly. “Biden hobbled out from around the corner. Clooney knew that the president had just arrived from the G-7 leaders’ summit in Apulia, Italy, that morning and might be tired, but, holy shit, he wasn’t expecting this,” Tapper and Thompson report. “The president appeared severely diminished, as if he’d aged a decade since Clooney last saw him, in December, 2022. He was taking tiny steps, and an aide seemed to be guiding him by the arm.”
An unnamed “Hollywood V.I.P.” likened it to “watching someone who was not alive.” And then came the moment of truth:
“Thank you for being here,” the President said to guests as he shuffled past them. “Thank you for being here.” Clooney felt a knot form in his stomach as the President approached him. Biden looked at him. “Thank you for being here,” he said. “Thank you for being here.”
“You know George,” the assisting aide told the President, gently reminding him who was in front of him. “Yeah, yeah,” the President said to one of the most recognizable men in the world, the host of this lucrative fund-raiser. “Thank you for being here.”
As the two men reportedly engaged in a brief back and forth about the president’s travels, Thompson and Tapper write “it seemed clear that the President had not recognized Clooney.” After being reminded by the aide once more, the lightbulb apparently went off for Biden as to who he was talking to. But the damage was done. “Clooney was shaken to his core,” the book states. “The president hadn’t recognized him, a man he had known for years.”
Even so, Clooney waited almost a month – until after Biden’s disastrous debate performance – to voice any of these concerns publicly.
External Validation
Moynihan found the detail about how long Clooney and Biden knew each other comical given its irrelevance to the issue at hand. “It’s George Clooney. You could have known him for five minutes,” he quipped. “You can’t recognize that; you can’t run for president. It’s done. It’s over.”
Megyn and the guys agreed the media and prominent Democrats were “gaslighting” the American public on Biden’s condition, and she believes it is time for a formal investigation. “I personally would like to see some sort of commission looking into who was president, how bad was it, who covered it up, who lied about the mental fitness of the sitting commander in chief who had access to the nuclear codes,” Megyn explained. “You can’t just dismiss it and pretend like it didn’t happen by saying it’s ‘backward looking’… We do need to get to the bottom of it.”
In the meantime, she said there is at least a bit of satisfaction to be had with all of the tea being spilled. “As much as we’re all like, ‘Oh my god, how is Jake Tapper writing a book about [Biden],’ I do want to hear what Jake Tapper found because I think he has probably got sources a lot closer to Joe Biden than I do,” Megyn said. “It is… not that we didn’t know. But aren’t you interested in the details of how bad it was? I am… I just feel so validated.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with The Fifth Column by tuning in to episode 1,072 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.