Former President Joe Biden reportedly failed to recognize his longtime friend George Clooney at a fundraiser for his reelection campaign last year.
Biden did not recognize Clooney at a June 2024 fundraiser for his presidential campaign, according to an excerpt from the upcoming book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, posted in The New Yorker.
Importantly, while Tapper is now revealing behind the scene tidbits, it is worth noting that the CNN host was also an active participant in the massive coverup regarding Biden’s cognitive decline.
As Breitbart News’ John Nolte pointed out earlier this year, Tapper’s “Orwellian desire” to “play firefighter” via his new book after he himself “was one of the chief arsonists who kept the blaze of this conspiracy alive” is “not in the least surprising.”
“What is sad,” Nolte added, is that the CNN host’s co-author, Alex Thompson, was “one of the only — if not the only — corporate media reporter who was willing to actively point to Biden’s decline before the infamous June of 2024 presidential debate.”
Jake Tapper wrote a book about the coverup of Biden's decline, as if he played no role in it at all. It's quite amazing.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) May 13, 2025
Tapper smeared and attacked people who brought up Biden's decline, including Democrats.pic.twitter.com/JR7IurXkgz
Why Thompson is letting Tapper crouch behind his shield of credibility remains unclear — but nonetheless, the book’s excerpt noted that Clooney had known Biden for decades by the time his reelection campaign began.
After last seeing Biden on December 4, 2022, the Ides of March star reportedly attended a June 15, 2024 fundraiser spearheaded by Hollywood mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles.
Clooney and fellow actor Julia Roberts were schmoozing potential donors and posing for photos when attendees began to murmur. The Michael Clayton star then turned to see Biden “hobbl[ing] out from around the corner,” Tapper and Thompson’s book revealed.
The actor knew that Biden “had just arrived from the G-7 leaders’ summit in Apulia, Italy, that morning and might be tired, but, holy shit, he wasn’t expecting this,” the excerpt read.
“The president appeared severely diminished, as if he’d aged a decade since Clooney last saw him,” the journalists’ forthcoming book continued, noting that Biden “was taking tiny steps, and an aide seemed to be guiding him by the arm.”
An unnamed Hollywood VIP was quoted in the excerpt saying, “It was like watching someone who was not alive,” adding, “It was startling. And we all looked at each other. It was so awful.”
Biden reportedly approached Clooney and said, “Thank you for being here” twice. An aide then informed the president, “You know George,” to which Biden replied, “Yeah, yeah,” and then said to the actor “Thank you for being here” for a third time.
“Hi, Mr. President,” Clooney said, to which Biden responded, “How are ya?”
“How was your trip?” the Up in the Air star asked, to which the 46th president simply answered, “It was fine.”
It seemed clear that Biden failed to recognized Clooney, an old friend of his, Tapper and Thompson wrote in their book.
“It was not okay,” the Hollywood insider who witnessed the moment said in the excerpt published Tuesday in The New Yorker.
“That thing, the moment where you recognize someone you know — especially a famous person who’s doing a fucking fundraiser for you — it was delayed. It was uncomfortable,” the Hollywood VIP recalled.
After that, the aide reportedly clarified to Biden that he was standing in front of “George Clooney,” to which the president replied, “Oh, yeah! Hi, George!”
“Clooney was shaken to his core,” the excerpt read, adding, “The President hadn’t recognized him, a man he had known for years.”
As Breitbart News reported, weeks after that fundraiser, Clooney published an op-ed in the New York Times saying he no longer believed Biden could win in the then-upcoming November presidential election, and called on Democrats to find a replacement candidate.
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.
