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George Clooney has said he is unconcerned about the persistent verbal abuse levelled at him by Donald Trump, after the president labelled him a “fake movie actor” on Truth Social.
Speaking to Gayle King on CBS Mornings, Clooney said: “I don’t care. I’ve known Donald Trump for a long time. My job is not to please the president of the United States. My job is to try and tell the truth when I can and when I have the opportunity. I am well aware of the idea that people will not like that.”
He continued: “People will criticise that. Elon Musk has weighed in [about me]. That is their right. It’s my right to say the other side.”
Trump’s attacks on Clooney renewed last summer, after the latter’s op-ed piece in the New York Times urging Joe Biden to step down for re-election. The actor wrote that Biden could continue with his work furthering democracy by allowing an alternative, younger Democratic candidate to run, who might stand a greater chance of beating Donald Trump.
“So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act,” posted Trump. “He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are.”
Speaking to CNN’s Jake Tapper last week, Clooney said he felt it was his “civic duty” to champion an alternative nominee.
“I don’t know if it was brave,” Clooney said. “It was a civic duty. When I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth, I thought that was time to.”
Reflecting on the backlash to his article, Clooney said: “The idea of freedom of speech is you can’t demand freedom of speech and then say, ‘But don’t say bad things about me.’”
He continued: “That’s the deal, you have to take your stand if you believe in it. Take a stand for it and then deal with the consequences.”
“I have to take that, that’s fair,” he concluded. “I’m OK with that, I’m OK with criticism for where I stand. I defend their right to criticise me as much as I defend my right to criticise them.”
Clooney is currently starring on Broadway in a stage version of his 2005 film Good Night, and Good Luck, about the conflict between veteran journalist Edward R Murrow and Senator Joseph McCarthy, who alleged that spies and Soviet sympathisers had infiltrated numerous US institutions, in particular the government, universities and the film and TV industry.
