NEW: George Clooney reached out to Obama before publishing NYT op ed calling for Biden to step down: report

George Clooney wrote a scathing op ed in The New York Times calling for Joe Biden to step out of the presidential race, and it turns out Barack Obama was totally okay with it. The two men are long-standing friends, have worked together on massive Demcorat Party fundraisers, and now it turns out, per Politico, that Clooney was in touch with Obama before the op ed. After that reach out, the op ed still ran. 

"While Obama did not encourage or advise Clooney to say what he said, he also didn’t object to it," Politico reported, citing "people familiar with their exchange." Both men were in attendance at a recent Hollywood fundraiser bash to raise funds for Biden's re-election campaign.



"The lack of pushback came despite the former president stepping out as one of the first big voices defending Biden following his abysmal debate performance last month — and as many of Obama’s former aides have emerged as some of the incumbent’s biggest critics," Politico went on to say.

Clooney referenced the Biden Hollywood fundraiser in his article, saying "But the one battle he cannot win is the fight against time. None of us can. 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 was Obama's vice president for eight years and Biden's presidency has been seen as an extention of the Obama era. For Obama to either tacitly or implicitly back Biden's voluntary removal from the presidential race is no small matter. 

And he's not the only one. Other high ranking Democrats, like Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have also signalled their willingness to move on from Biden. The calls for Biden to step aside have intensified, not diminished, as Biden continues his media blitz in an attempt to prove to everyone he's not too old and diminished to do the job.