Democrats lost big in 2024 and they're still trying to figure out why.
Now one of their biggest Hollywood donors just tore the party wide open.
And George Clooney threw gasoline on the Democrat dumpster fire with two words about Kamala Harris.
Clooney stands by his Biden takedown
George Clooney triggered a political earthquake last summer when he wrote a New York Times op-ed calling for Joe Biden to step down after Biden's disastrous debate performance against President Donald Trump.¹
The Hollywood megadonor had just hosted a record-breaking fundraiser for Biden three weeks earlier where he saw firsthand Biden wasn't the same sharp leader from years past.²
"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," Clooney wrote. "He wasn't even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate."³
Biden dropped out of the race just two weeks later on July 21, 2024, paving the way for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the nominee.⁴
But here's what makes Clooney's admission now so explosive for Democrats.
In an interview that aired Sunday on CBS's "Sunday Morning," Clooney didn't back down from pushing Biden out.⁵
When asked if he would write the op-ed again knowing Trump won, Clooney didn't hesitate: "Yes."⁶
Then came the bombshell Democrats didn't see coming.
Clooney drops truth bomb about Harris candidacy
Clooney admitted running Kamala Harris was "a mistake" because she had to "run against her own record."⁷
"We had a chance," Clooney said. "I wanted there to be – as I wrote in the op-ed – a primary. Let's battle test this quickly and get it up and going."⁸
"I think the mistake with it being Kamala is that she had to run against her own record, and it's very hard to do if the point of running is to say 'I'm not that person.' It's hard to do," Clooney continued.⁹
That's the dirty little secret Democrats won't admit publicly but everyone knows privately.
Harris was tied to every Biden policy failure from inflation to the border crisis to the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.
She couldn't credibly claim she'd be different from Biden when she served as his second-in-command for four years.
The whole "turn the page" message fell flat because voters knew Harris was part of the administration they wanted to turn the page FROM.
Clooney wanted Democrats to hold a quick primary to "battle test" candidates and pick someone who could actually beat Trump.¹⁰
Instead, party elites coronated Harris without giving voters any say in the matter.
Democrat power brokers thought they could skip the messy democratic process and just anoint their preferred candidate.
Turns out voters had other ideas about that in November.
Hunter Biden's meltdown over Clooney backfires spectacularly
The actor also addressed Hunter Biden's profanity-laced tirade against him earlier this year.¹¹
Hunter accused Clooney of betraying his father and claimed former President Barack Obama gave Clooney "the blessing" to write the op-ed.¹²
"F— him! F— him and f— everybody around him," Hunter said in a July interview. "George Clooney is not a f—ing actor. He is a f—ing, I don't know what he is. He's a brand."¹³
Clooney dismissed Hunter's accusations as "outright lies."¹⁴
"I could spend a lot of time debunking many of the things he said because many of the things he said were just outright lies," Clooney said. "Obama didn't put me up to it, it wasn't my fundraiser – it was my fundraiser … all the things."¹⁵
But Clooney took the high road by refusing to engage in a public feud with the former president's son.
"But the reality is, I don't think looking backward like that is helpful to anyone, particularly to him," Clooney stated. "I don't think it's helpful for the Democrat Party, and so I'm just going to wish him well on his ongoing recovery and hope he does well and just leave it at that."¹⁶
That's code for "everyone knows Hunter has serious problems and I'm not going to pile on."
Clooney defended writing the op-ed as his "civic duty" because Democrats weren't "telling the truth" about Biden's condition.¹⁷
"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," Clooney told CNN earlier this year. "When I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth, I thought that was time to… some people [are mad], sure. That's OK, you know."¹⁸
Democrats are still in denial about why they lost in 2024.
They want to blame everything except their own terrible candidates and failed policies.
Clooney just told them exactly what went wrong – they picked the wrong person without giving voters a choice.
But party bosses learned nothing from this disaster and they'll make the same mistakes again in 2028.
¹ Erin Doherty, "George Clooney says Biden should step aside in NYT Op-Ed," Axios, July 10, 2024.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Zoe G. Phillips, "Hollywood's Highest-Profile Harris Endorsements," The Hollywood Reporter, October 30, 2024.
⁵ David Lindfield, "George Clooney: 'It Was a Mistake' for Democrats to Run Kamala Harris in 2024," Slay News, November 3, 2025.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ Ibid.
¹² "Hunter Biden goes off on George Clooney: 'F‑‑‑ him and everybody around him'," The Hill, July 21, 2025.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ Lindfield, "George Clooney: 'It Was a Mistake.'"
¹⁵ Ibid.
¹⁶ Ibid.
¹⁷ Lindsay Kornick, "George Clooney doesn't regret urging Biden to drop out in New York Times op-ed," Fox News, November 3, 2025.
¹⁸ Ibid.
