In September 2017, George Clooney did an interview with the Daily Beast where he primarily talked about his the-then film Suburbicon, racism in the USA, and why Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump.
However, the conversation went beyond that, and at one point, George Clooney was asked by interviewer Marlow Stern about his opinion on the following.
“Trump has been stoking this culture war between ‘coastal elites’ and Middle America – the irony, of course, being that Trump, himself is a ‘coastal elite’.”
The two-time Oscar-winner, Clooney, had an instant response to this, which was also deemed as his savage reply to Donald Trump for calling him one of the “Hollywood Elites.” A part of his statement read as follows.
“Hollywood elite? I don’t have a star on Hollywood Boulevard. Donald Trump has a star on Hollywood Boulevard! F*ck you!”
Now, exactly six years after George Clooney’s brutal remarks about Donald Trump, his entire statement has resurfaced on the internet courtesy of @CalltoActivism’s viral tweet.
Many believe that with the 2024 presidential election looming around the corner, past comments about the former U.S. President who is running for the upcoming election are resurfacing online.
Here's everything that George Clooney said about Donald Trump during his 2017 interview
In mid-2017, then-President Donald Trump allegedly accused several Hollywood celebrities as “Hollywood Elites,” including George Clooney. It was his effort to try and explain how most Hollywood stars hailed from wealthy families who lived across the coast as opposed to working-class Americans living in the middle or the South.
While the Syriana actor did not hit back at Trump immediately, during his September 2017 interview with the Daily Beast, he set the record straight about his own background. At the same time, Clooney also pointed out how Donald Trump himself was one of the “coastal elites” who “lives in a gold tower.”
“This idea that I’m somehow the ‘Hollywood Elite’ and this guy who takes a sh*t in a gold toilet is somehow the man of the people is laughable,” he stated.
George Clooney further added how he was born and bred in Kentucky and had to sell insurance and women’s footwear from door to door to earn his living during his youth. He also mentioned how he did all-nighters in liquor stores to “buy suits that were too big and too long” and also made ties out of the bottom of pants so that he had “a tie to go on job interviews.”
As per his statement, he said he grew up figuring out what it was like to live a life for eight years without medical insurance.
“People in Hollywood, for the most part, are people from the Midwest who moved to Hollywood to have a career. So, this idea of ‘coastal elites’ living in a bubble is ridiculous.”
Following this, Clooney added that if anyone lived in a bubble, it was Donald Trump himself who only had twelve people working for him in his private company and did not have the least idea of how a corporation with hundreds and thousands of people operated, or how one needed to take care of their employees.
“He ran a company of twelve people! … When you direct a film, you have seven different unions all wanting different things, you have to find consensus with all of them, and you have to get them moving in the same direction. He’s never had to do any of that kind of stuff. I just look at it and I laugh when I see him say ‘Hollywood elite’.”
Recently, years after the original interview was published, George Clooney’s fierce remarks have now resurfaced on the internet in the wake of ongoing preparations for the 2024 presidential election in which Donald Trump is the primary candidate for the Republicans.
It is important to note that Clooney’s comments have been shared on and off over the years, and garnered online traction in October and December 2020 as well.