George Clooney: 3 Words to Stand Up to Trump
George Clooney is taking on CBS and ABC for bending the knee to President Donald Trump and his administration.
The actor, in a Variety cover story published Tuesday, was upset by the major TV networks settling lawsuits with the president over the past year and change.
CBS parent company Paramount settled Trump’s frivolous lawsuit against “60 Minutes” ahead of the company’s merger with Skydance, a move that required the administration’s approval. And ABC News reached a settlement with the president in a separate defamation lawsuit last December.
“If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, ‘Go fuck yourself,’ we wouldn’t be where we are in the country,” Clooney said.
“That’s simply the truth.”
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Clooney — a journalism major in college and the son of journalist Nick Clooney — starred as legendary CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow in the Broadway adaptation of his film “Good Night, and Good Luck” earlier this year.
Murrow famously used his reports on the CBS newsmagazine “See It Now” to confront Joseph McCarthy and his Red Scare tactics.
In his interview with Variety, Clooney expressed his concerns about CBS News’ rightward tilt in recent months under Paramount CEO (and Trump ally) David Ellison, as well as Bari Weiss, the conservative journalist who was recently installed as the news division’s editor-in-chief.
The actor stressed that Weiss is “dismantling CBS News as we speak,” speaking just over a week after her controversial decision to hold a “60 Minutes” report on the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador.
“I’m worried about how we inform ourselves and how we’re going to discern reality without a functioning press,” he said.
Clooney told the magazine that the president, who was once friendly with him, has contributed to a “very trying time,” and his behavior conflicts with Murrow’s ideals.
“It can depress you or make you very angry. But you have to find the most positive way through it,” he said. “You have to put your head down and keep moving forward because quitting isn’t an option.”