President Donald Trump blasted CBS News’s 60 Minutes for airing what he called a “puff piece” on actor George Clooney.
Clooney was behind a fundraising effort for then-President Joe Biden that raised about $28 million, resulting in the largest Democratic haul in history. However, the actor flipped against Biden over age concerns and called for him to step down. Clooney endorsed then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
“Why would the now highly discredited 60 Minutes be doing a total ‘puff piece’ on George Clooney, a second rate movie ‘star,’ and failed political pundit,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. “He fought hard for Sleepy Joe’s election and then, right after the Debate, dumped him like a dog. Later, I assume under orders from the Obama camp, pushed all out for ‘Kamala,’ only to soon realize that that was not going to work out [too] well.”
The actor defended his call for Biden to step down during the interview, saying he was “raised to tell the truth.”
“I had seen the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised. And so I feel as if there was a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that,” Clooney explained. “And I was not proud of that. And I also believed I had to tell the truth.”
Clooney’s participation in the fundraiser came after reports that he called the White House after Biden condemned the international warrants issued to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Clooney’s wife, Amal Clooney, is a prosecutor working with the International Criminal Court, at which she has offered her legal expertise since 2005.
The actor helped host a fundraiser for Biden ahead of the 2020 election, which earned him $7 million. Clooney also donated $500,000 to the Biden-Harris campaign.
Meanwhile, Trump is in the middle of a lawsuit against CBS News. Trump’s grievances came after the program hosted his then-opponent Harris for an interview a month before the election. Trump claimed the edits made to Harris’s interview were “the biggest scandal in broadcast history: they actually took her answer out and gave her a different answer after it was shot.” The president is suing the network for $20 million over the dispute.
“60 Minutes even fraudulently inserted Fake answers into [Harris’s] disastrous interview, aired just before Election Day, in one of the most embarrassing and dishonest events in broadcast history. … And now George Clooney again? His press agent should be making a fortune!!!” Trump wrote.
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60 Minutes aired the interview with Harris in full as part of the Federal Communications Commission’s investigation. After the release, CBS published a statement defending any editing, saying, “As the full transcript shows, we edited the interview to ensure that as much of the vice president’s answers to 60 Minutes’ many questions were included in our original broadcast while fairly representing those answers.”
While CBS News’s Scott Pelley said he had plans to sit down with Trump for an interview before the election, Trump’s campaign denied that any appointment was ever settled on. At the time, the campaign also took issue with “jump cuts” that the network could make to Trump’s answers.
