NEW YORK: Actor George Clooney, one of the Democratic Party’s leading fundraisers, on Wednesday made an emotional and heartfelt plea for President Joe Biden to end his faltering reelection campaign.
Clooney — a member of the Hollywood elite that provides key support to the Democrats — joined a growing list of public figures calling for Biden, 81, to step aside after his terrible debate performance against Donald Trump last month.
“I love Joe Biden,” Clooney wrote in the New York Times. “I consider him a friend, and I believe in him... But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time.”
A self-described “lifelong Democrat,” Clooney co-hosted a star-studded fundraiser with Biden in Los Angeles only last month featuring former president Barack Obama.
The Biden campaign said that the event brought in a record $28 million.
“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, referencing a famous hot-mic clip from Biden’s vice presidency.
“He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate,” Clooney said — a direct challenge to Biden’s claim that his poor debate showing was a one-off.
“The dam has broken” on Democratic lawmakers publicly calling for Biden to withdraw, Clooney said, asking for more to come forward.
“Top Democrats — Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, Nancy Pelosi — and senators, representatives and other candidates who face losing in November need to ask this president to voluntarily step aside.”
The Oscar-winner brushed aside worries that Biden’s exit would create chaos four months before an election in which the Democrats hope to keep Trump from power, and did not endorse a replacement candidate.
The party should hear from contenders such as Vice President Kamala Harris, Maryland Governor Wes Moore and others, “then we could go into the Democratic convention next month and figure it out,” he wrote.
George Clooney urges Biden to end campaign
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George Clooney urges Biden to end campaign
- Clooney — a member of the Hollywood elite that provides key support to the Democrats — joined a growing list of public figures calling for Biden, 81, to step aside
- George Clooney: I love Joe Biden. I consider him a friend, and I believe in him... But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time
130 kidnapped Nigerian schoolchildren freed: government
- The religiously diverse African country of 230 million people is the scene of myriad conflicts that have killed both Christians and Muslims
ABUJA: Nigerian authorities have secured the release of 130 kidnapped schoolchildren taken by gunmen from a Catholic school in November, a presidential spokesman said Sunday, after 100 were freed earlier this month.
“Another 130 abducted Niger state pupils released, none left in captivity,” Sunday Dare said in a post on X, accompanied by a photo of smiling children.
In late November, hundreds of students and staff were kidnapped from St. Mary’s co-educational boarding school in north-central Niger state.
The attack came as the country buckled under a wave of mass abductions reminiscent of the infamous 2014 Boko Haram kidnapping of schoolgirls in Chibok.
The west African country suffers from multiple interlinked security concerns, from jihadists in the northeast to armed “bandit” gangs in the northwest.
A UN source told AFP that “the remaining set of girls/secondary school students will be taken to Minna,” the capital of Niger state, on Tuesday.
The exact number of those kidnapped, and those who remain in captivity, has been unclear since the attack on the school, located in the rural hamlet of Papiri.
The Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) said 315 students and staff were kidnapped.
Some 50 escaped immediately afterwards, and on December 7 the government secured the release of around 100.
That would leave about 165 thought to remain in captivity.
But a statement from President Bola Tinubu at the time put the remaining people being held at 115.
- Spate of mass kidnappings -
It has not been made public who seized the children from their boarding school, or how the government secured their release.
Though kidnappings for ransom are a common way for criminals and armed groups to make quick cash, a spate of mass abductions in November put an uncomfortable spotlight on Nigeria’s already grim security situation.
Assailants across the country kidnapped two dozen Muslim schoolgirls, 38 church worshippers and a bride and her bridesmaids, with farmers, women and children also taken hostage.
The kidnappings came as Nigeria faces a diplomatic offensive from the United States, where President Donald Trump has alleged that there were mass killings of Christians that amounted to a “genocide.”
The Nigerian government and independent analysts reject that framing, which has long been used by the Christian right in the United States and Europe.
The religiously diverse African country of 230 million people is the scene of myriad conflicts that have killed both Christians and Muslims.
