Why George Clooney Reportedly Chewed Out a MSNBC Producer Over His Infamous Biden Op-Ed

Six months removed from Donald Trump’s decisive victory in the 2024 election, the post-mortems are starting to arrive. 

Several books are slated to hit shelves in the coming weeks that examine what went wrong for Democrats – chiefly, how Joe Biden’s campaign flamed out so spectacularly in the wake of the June presidential debate on CNN.

One of the before-and-after moments in the race came when George Clooney published an op-ed in The New York Times encouraging Biden to step aside. At the time, many wondered if Clooney was writing on behalf of one Barack Obama, a claim author Chris Whipple says the actor resented.

On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Mike Solana, founder of Pirate Wires, to discuss the new reporting about Clooney and what these books reveal about the actor.

Clooney’s Meltdown

Whipple’s new book Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History comes out next week but is already generating plenty of buzz. The Guardian published an explosive report earlier this week about the writer’s interview with former Biden chief of staff Ron Klain about the disastrous preparations for the ill-fated debate.

And that is just one element of Whipple’s scoop. Reporter Tara Palmeri also got an advanced copy of the tome ahead of interviewing the author, and she flagged an anecdote about Clooney and a MSNBC Morning Joe producer as “one of the most stunning moments” in the book.

In the column titled “I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.“ that ran two weeks after the CNN debate, the Oscar winner professed his “love” for Biden’s political career, “morals,” and “character” before dropping the hammer. “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 wrote. “He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.”

Notably, Clooney kept his mouth shut about what he witnessed at that starry fundraiser that brought in some $30 million until after the debate debacle. And there was plenty of speculation at the time about what role Clooney’s close pal Obama played in the piece, including from MSNBC’s Mika Brzezinski.

“This wasn’t George Clooney,” she said a day after the op-ed was published. “I think that Barack Obama has a lot of influence, and I think that there’s, there’s a lot there.”

That reportedly did not sit well with the actor, who wasted no time calling one of the show’s producers to voice his disapproval. “His phone lit up and it’s George Clooney – a good friend of his – and Clooney went absolutely ballistic,” Whipple told Palmeri. “What ensued was an exchange of F-bombs for, you know, several minutes.”

Palmeri, quoting Whipple’s book, shared the alleged exchange that occurred on the call between Clooney and the unnamed producer.

CLOONEY: You f-cked me. You’re my friend. You should have stood up for me.

PRODUCER: George, it’s just not a movie, where you go script page to script page.

CLOONEY: F-ck you.

PRODUCER: F-ck yourself.

Citing the book, Palmeri said Clooney allegedly called the producer a second time. “This is a morning talk show on a cable channel. Nobody gives a f-ck if we say if [Biden] should get out or if he should stay in,” the producer said. “Nobody f-cking cares. It’s sky-writing. It’s f-cking gone. George, I told you before. We’ll try and take care of it tomorrow morning. I promise you.”

Clooney then reportedly said “I don’t know whether I trust you,” which aggravated the staffer. “Well, f-ck you if you don’t trust me. Stop f-cking calling me,” the producer responded.

What It Reveals

Palmeri asked Whipple if he confirmed whether Obama had a hand in the op-ed, and he said there was never explicit confirmation. He did, however, get a telling response from former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley.

“I don’t think anybody knows for sure. I asked his… second chief of staff Bill Daley what he thought,” Whipple shared. “I said, ‘Do you think he gave Clooney a green light?’ And Daly said, ‘I don’t think he would have given him a red light.’”

Megyn called it “an implicit admission” from Daley, which Solana said makes Clooney’s apoplectic response to Brzezinski’s suggestion all the more interesting. “Maybe the interesting tell here is actually that Obama has declined in relevance – is that really the reason that he is angry,” he wondered. “It’s like, ‘Don’t tell me that I am Obama’s patsy.’ Well, why not? Because that would carry some weight in a previous era, but maybe not as much anymore.”

Perhaps, Megyn said, Clooney’s anger is just a reflection of insecurity. “As a man, you would feel totally emasculated by what is probably the truth, which is, you were just the puppet to a more important man’s opinions,” she noted. “But it just shows how thin-skinned this Hollywood A-lister is.”

As Clooney is currently on stage lecturing theater-goers on Broadway about the virtues of journalism, Megyn said his biggest mistake may have been his understanding of the media. “He said, ‘I thought I could trust you.’ Well, you know what? That was your first mistake,” she concluded. “You shouldn’t trust cable news producers. They are only there to do one thing, put points on the board, not befriend Hollywood celebrities.”

You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Solana by tuning in to episode 1,042 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.