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NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles! Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called out actor George Clooney in her new book over what she described as a "gut punch" to former President Joe Biden with his brutal New York Times essay calling on him to leave the 2024 race. "When I woke up, the piece was there, splayed across the pages of The New York Times. The headline? 'George Clooney: I Love Joe Biden. But We Need a New Nominee.' I read it in disbelief," Jean-Pierre wrote in her new book, "Independent." Clooney wrote a guest essay for the Times in July 2024 that called on Biden to exit the race. It was one of several major moments in the pressure campaign to get him out of what looked like an unwinnable contest for Democrats with Biden atop the ticket. "It was a gut punch. Clooney was an A-list Hollywood celebrity and a self-professed proud Democrat. His opinion was a huge deal and would draw tremendous attention from the media and the public alike," Jean-Pierre wrote. KARINE JEAN-PIERRE WRITES SHE COULDN'T 'STOMACH' BEING A DEMOCRAT ANYMORE AFTER PARTY'S TREATMENT OF BIDEN Clooney helped Biden raise millions at a Los Angeles fundraiser just weeks before publishing the essay. "It’s devastating to say it, but the Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the fundraiser was not the Joe ‘big F-ing deal’ Biden of 2010. He wasn’t even the Joe Biden of 2020. He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate," Clooney wrote. The actor later defended his decision to write the essay for the Times, calling it his "civic duty." "I’m a Democrat in Kentucky so I get it. When I saw people on my side of the street not telling the truth, I thought that was time," he told CNN's Jake Tapper in April. GEORGE CLOONEY ADMITS MEDIA 'DROPPED THE BALL' ON COVERING BIDEN'S INCAPACITIES Jean-Pierre defended the former president against Clooney's accusations. The ex-press secretary has repeatedly insisted she never saw anything that concerned about her Biden's mental acuity, in contrast to numerous behind-the-scenes accounts of Biden's decline in office. "Though his concerns weren’t completely unjustified, his assessment didn’t offer the full context," Jean-Pierre wrote, noting Clooney hosted a fundraiser with Biden and adding that she was with Biden on the trip. "We’d just come back from Italy. We flew to Washington, D.C., where some staffers got off and others got on, before taking off for the West Coast. We went through nine time zones. I was tired, and I’m decades younger than Biden, so it was understandable that he might not have been sprinting across a ballroom or at his most electric when addressing the star-studded crowd," she wrote. CLICK HERE FOR MORE COVERAGE OF MEDIA AND CULTURE CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "Clooney’s essay may not have been a calculated jab in the party’s campaign to push out the president, but the letter lent a renewed velocity to the effort. After its publication, more and more party leaders said Biden had to go," the former press secretary wrote.
