George Clooney gets in on the Biden blame game! 🫵

PLUS: A Florida Republican is in trouble 👮

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1. Whose fault is it?

(George Clooney/ Photo via Wikimedia Commons)

Whose fault is it that Democrats lost the 2024 election to Donald Trump? Joe Biden’s? Kamala Harris’? The Democratic messaging operation? The media? All of the above? None of the above?

Before you even start with the “Chris, why are you bothering with this??? The election is over and Trump is destroying democracy??!?” thing, let me make two points: 1) I cover Donald Trump a whole hell of a lot in this space and 2) How Democrats ultimately decide who to blame for the 2024 election defeat will absolutely inform how they approach the next four years and who they consider nominating next time around.

Which brings me to — of all things — an interview George Clooney gave to Maureen Dowd this week in which he discussed his own diagnosis of what went wrong for his party.

Clooney, you will remember, was, perhaps, the straw that broke the camel’s back in the post-June 27 debate period — as Biden tried to hang on to the nomination. Clooney wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in which he said he had interacted with Biden week earlier at a fundraiser and found the incumbent, well, wanting.

Here’s what Clooney wrote:

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 wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.

Biden dropped out of the race 11 days later.

Clooney is wading back into the blame game in his latest conversation with Dowd. As she writes: “Biden abdicated his responsibility by hiding his incapacities, Clooney told me, and ‘the media, in many ways, dropped the ball.’”

A few things jump off the page there.

First, Clooney is saying that Biden (and presumably the people around the president) purposely hid his infirmities — a bridge further than Clooney (or any other prominent Democrat) has gone before.

Second, Clooney is blaming the media — at least in part — for not asking harder and more persistent questions about Biden’s health. I actually agree with that sentiment — and even made a YouTube video in which I admitted I should have pushed harder on that front.

But, I will note that even in Clooney’s media blaming, there is a whole lot of finger- pointing at Biden. Clooney knows damn well that Biden’s inner circle did everything they could to shame ANY reporter who asked questions about his health and competence. They would tell you that you were an ageist. They would say he was more energetic than his young aides. That he was vibrant and full of life behind the scenes.

We now know, of course, that all of that stuff was utter bullshit. Which is, if you parse his words, exactly what Clooney told Dowd.

Here’s why it matters going forward.