CNN’s Jake Tapper appeared decidedly less than convinced by the Biden campaign’s response to movie star George Clooney’s call for the president to quit his 2024 run for the White House.
Clooney urged Biden to end his race in an op-ed for The New York Times on Wednesday, less than a month after hosting a fundraiser for the president.
“The Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fund-raiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010,” wrote Clooney. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”
On Wednesday’s broadcast of “The Lead,” CNN senior White House correspondent Kayla Tausche noted a Biden campaign official’s response to Clooney’s essay as being, “Clooney left three hours before the president.”
Anchor Tapper asked, “But what does that mean? That George Clooney left three before? What’s the point?”
Tausche sought to explain the comment, “The point of that is to suggest that Biden’s stamina is better than Clooney’s. And Clooney didn’t have, you know, eyes on the entire event. That’s the response to the Clooney op-ed.”
“OK,” responded Tapper, appearing bewildered by the comment from the president’s team, before letting out a little chuckle.