George Clooney has no plans to endorse anyone in the 2020 Democratic primaries, but he promised to fundraise for anyone who can make Donald Trump a “one-term president.”
“I’m going to stay out of the primaries, [but] I’ll fundraise for anybody that is out there that’s interested in trying to make this president a one-term president,” Clooney told Variety at the premiere of his new Hulu series Catch-22.
“I feel like part of the lessons you learn as you get older is it’s probably best not to commit in a primary, now,” the Oceans Eleven star said. “At this point in the primary … we have to kind of see who ends up being the nominee so that you can really support them in the general and I think that’s a better move.”
Though Clooney believes that Trump can be beaten because “the narrow edge he took to get there in 2016 has all gone,” he expressed concerns that a third-party run by former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz could split the Democratic vote and swing the election to Trump.
“We just have to not have third party candidates like Howard Schultz,” he said, noting that in the 2000 election “Ralph Nader took out Al Gore [when] he took out thousands of votes out of Florida and Gore lost by 400. Those have consequences, those kinds of moves.”
Clooney, an outspoken critic of Trump and a prolific fundraiser for Democratic candidates, famously underestimated Trump’s candidacy in 2016.
Speaking to the press at the Cannes film festive in May 2016, he dismissed Trump’s chances of winning, saying, “That’s not going to happen.”
A Gallup poll released on Monday showed Trump’s job approval at 46 percent, his highest rating yet. At this same point in his presidency in April 2011, President Barrack Obama’s Gallup job approval rating was 44 percent. He won re-election the next year.
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