Trump dumps on Clooney’s ‘puff piece’ ‘60 Minutes’ interview

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U.S. President Donald Trump has dismissed his arch nemesis George Clooney as a “second-rate movie star” after the Oscar winner’s sit down with 60 Minutes on Sunday night.

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During a segment with the news program, Clooney, 63, was speaking about the parallels he sees in his new Broadway show, Good Night, and Good Luck, in which he plays dogged American journalist Edward R. Murrow, and today’s relationship between the press and government.

“We are now at a place now where we’ve found that it’s harder and harder and harder to discern the truth. Facts are now negotiated,” Clooney said.

Clooney pointed to a lawsuit ABC recently settled with the Trump administration and a pending $20 billion case against CBS, which the president launched after accusing the network of editing an interview with his political rival Kamala Harris.

”When the other three estates fail, when the judiciary and the executive and the legislative branches fail us, the fourth estate has to succeed,” Clooney said as 60 Minutes’ cameras captured him during an table read for the play.

“Journalism and telling truth to power has to be waged like war is waged. It doesn’t just happen accidentally. It takes people saying, ‘We’re going to do these stories and you’re going to have to come after us, and that’s the way it is,’” Clooney told journalist Jon Wertheim.

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Name checking press battles that have gone on between reporters and owners at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post, Clooney said threats from the U.S. government are being used “to make journalists smaller.”

“Governments don’t like the freedom of the press. They never have. And that goes for whether you are a conservative or a liberal or whatever side you’re on. They don’t like the press,” he said.

Clooney, a lifelong Democrat, also spoke about his decision to publicly ask for Joe Biden to drop out of last year’s presidential race.

“I had seen the president up close for this fundraiser, and I was surprised. And so I feel as if there was a lot of profiles in cowardice in my party through all of that,” Clooney said. “I believed I had to tell the truth.”

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But Clooney’s interview did not sit well with Trump, who questioned the show for giving airtime to the “second-rate movie star.”

“Why would the now highly-discredited 60 Minutes be doing a total ‘puff piece’ on George Clooney, a second-rate movie ‘star’ and failed political pundit,” Trump, 78, wrote on Truth Social.

“He fought hard for Sleepy Joe’s election, and then, right after the Debate, dumped him like a dog. Later, I assume under orders from the Obama camp, pushed all out for ‘Kamala,’ only to soon realize that this was not going to work out too well,” Trump continued.

“60 Minutes even fraudulently inserted Fake answers into her disastrous interview, aired just before Election Day, in one of the most embarrassing and dishonest events in broadcast history…And now George Clooney again? His press agent should be making a fortune!!!”

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After Clooney wrote a New York Times opinion piece urging Biden to step down last summer, Trump put the actor on blast, responding to the piece via his Truth Social social media platform, writing, “So now fake movie actor George Clooney, who never came close to making a great movie, is getting into the act. He’s turned on Crooked Joe like the rats they both are.”

Trump continued, lashing out at Clooney’s claim that Biden “saved our democracy.”

“No, Crooked Joe was the one who WEAPONIZED Law Enforcement against his political Opponent, who created the most devastating INFLATION in the history of our Country, who Embarrassed our Nation in Afghanistan, and whose crazy Open Border Policy has allowed millions of people to illegally pour into our Country, many from prisons and mental institutions,” Trump seethed. “Crooked Joe Biden didn’t save our Democracy, he brought our Democracy to its knees.”

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The Ocean’s 11 star was a vociferous critic of Trump during his first presidency. Back in 2017, when he spoke to Postmedia, Clooney dismissed Trump as a Hollywood wannabe.

“Donald Trump pays $100,000-a-year to the Screen Actors Guild and has a star on Hollywood Boulevard. I don’t have a star on Hollywood Boulevard, but Donald Trump does,” he swiped.

He also bashed Trump’s onetime chief strategist Steve Bannon, calling him “a failed f***ing screenwriter.”

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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