George Clooney's pick to be the next Democrat presidential candidate makes surprising announcement
George Clooney 's pick to be the next Democratic presidential nominee stunningly announced he is not running for the nation's highest office.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore appeared on ABC's The View on Thursday when liberal co-host Joy Behar repeatedly pressed the Democrat on his plans for 2028.
'I am not running,' he reiterated about five times, even as Behar asked, 'What if we really, really need you?'
Instead, Moore, 46, insisted that Maryland is his priority - and he hopes to win re-election as the governor next year.
Moore has led the state since 2023 and has done 'a pretty bang up job' in the state, liberal co-host Sunny Hostin said on the show.
The governor has long been considered a potential standard-bearer for the nation's next president, and earlier this month, Clooney told CNN he thinks Moore 'in particular... is spectacular' to lead the Democrats moving forward.
'I think he is a guy that handled this tragedy in Baltimore beautifully,' the Oscar-winner said of Baltimore's Key Bridge collapse in early 2024.
'He's two tours of active duty in Afghanistan. He speaks sort of beautifully, he's smart. He's a proper leader,' he added of Moore.
'I like him a lot, I think he's someone we could all fall in behind,' Clooney added.
John Ronquillo, the director of the Institute for Public Leadership and a professor at the University of Maryland, has also suggested Moore could be the 'next Obama' - rising rapidly through the political ranks to ascend to the White House.
'While I want to be careful with comparisons — Barack Obama is Barack Obama and Wes Moore is Wes Moore — there's no denying that they've both had a meteoric ascent to political prominence,' Ronquillo told The Hill newspaper.
Obama endorsed Moore's bid for governor and cut a campaign ad for him.
But Moore is not the only potential Democrat leader.
Other names that have been floated include Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
None of them have yet announced their intention to run in the presidential election, with two years to go before the primaries.
Regardless, Clooney warned Jake Tapper: 'We have to find someone rather soon.'
And even though Moore made clear on Thursday he does not want to run for president, he had some strong words for the current White House occupant.
He hit out President Donald Trump's tariff policy as causing 'chaos' in his interview on The View.
'I think this is a powerful moment because people are seeing the power of the president and the power of Washington, but I think what people are also seeing is what's the power of the governor, what's the power of the states, what's the power of the people,' the Maryland Democrat said.
Moore added that he 'will work with anyone who has the people of my state in their best interest,' but added, 'I will bow to no one.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Statesman
40 minutes ago
- New Statesman
A new force is stirring on the left
Photo byWe live at a time of extraordinary change: from the postwar liberal international order, dominated by the US, into something whose contours are not yet clear, and may never be. From a world where economic growth was a year-in, year-out near-guarantee, to one where climate instability, resource conflicts and nature crises threaten the very foundations of that growth. And, here in Britain, from one where a rock-solid two-party system dominated all questions of national political leadership, to something far more open. This is a time of new forces in politics. The beneficiaries of this change, so far, have been the radical right. Reform's local election results were a bolt from above. Councils that had been Labour strongholds for decades, rotting away from below, were finally knocked over. In the end, it has been Reform and the right, not the left outside Labour, that delivered the fatal blows. And yet that left has, so far, failed to respond. After its most extraordinary general election results since universal suffrage, with millions of votes, and four Green MPs and five left independents returned to Parliament, the past 12 months have been drift. The Greens have most obviously failed to capitalise, treading water in the polls and failing to recruit. The independent left twirls endlessly around the question of Jeremy Corbyn and his leadership – nearly a decade after Corbyn won his first Labour Party election. However, in launching his leadership bid for the Greens, Zack Polanski has demonstrated his grasp of the first rule in politics: knowing when to seize the initiative. In pledging 'eco-populism', he has made a bold claim to the form of politics our chaotic times demand. Starmer in office implicitly accepts those new constraints. This is the real meaning of the Spending Review: that Labour has accepted the harder economic realities we live with but cannot seriously address them. They have chosen to fund social spending to the barest minimum – Boris Johnson increased public spending by more – instead driving up military expenditure to the highest levels since the Cold War, and to concentrate some limited funds on infrastructure investment, matched to a forthcoming industrial strategy. We have not seen a government like this before. It will work electorally if, and only if, growth convincingly returns. Yet Labour appear to have no clue as to how unlikely this is. Only this week, the World Bank revised its forecasts for global growth downwards, in the face of continuing uncertainty – even ahead of Israel's military escalation. Domestically, Labour's concentration of spending on long-run capital investment will do the party few favours: Joe Biden did the same thing, on vastly bigger scale, investing in new infrastructure across the United States. It did nothing for the Democrats electorally since it confers few immediate benefits for most people. All Donald Trump had to do was ask if voters felt better off after four years of Biden, and of course the great majority did not. Nigel Farage will only have to repeat the same trick in 2029. Labour's strategists are aware of their weakness. They believe, instead, that they can frame the next election as a straight Reform v Labour contest, and thus frighten voters back into supporting the party. This is both dangerous, and stupid. Dangerous, because for this to work, Reform has to look like a serious threat; which means in practice Reform will be setting the agenda whilst Labour scrabble about to tag along. Witness the farrago over nationalising British Steel. And it is stupid because when Labour has failed to deliver in office and then offers the merest whisp of difference with Reform on key issues, principally migration, its voters will not turn out. Who could honestly blame them? Starmer's Labour is deeply unappealing. The local election results were a glimpse of one possible near-future. For too many voters Gaza is a moral stain on Keir Starmer that he cannot wash away, just as Iraq has been for Tony Blair. It already cost Labour dearly in 2024, and it will continue to do so in the future. But it is not only the moral offence of Labour's complicity – as powerful as this is. It is the party leadership's response to the ending of the postwar world, dramatically signalled by both JD Vance's Munich Security Conference tirade and Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariff assault, that will very directly impact on living standards here – in the short-sighted half-deal on tariffs, with its open-ended future loss of democratic sovereignty, and in the government's commitments to rapid military buildup. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe The controlled opposition, Reform, have little to nothing useful to say on this, tied as they are to Trump and his coterie. But they have elan, and no shame in saying and doing what is necessary to win. The temptation for the broader left is to dust off the Corbyn playbook and insist that simply turning the volume up on the old tunes will cut through against the government. But with Reform now playing pick 'n' mix with the left's historic programme – a tasty little industrial strategy here, a cheeky renationalisation there – the political space for a social democratic revival is being extinguished. It may not be especially plausible for Farage to claim he wants British Steel in public ownership, but he, plausibly, could be the next Prime Minister and Jeremy Corbyn will not be. The left cannot compete on these terms. We need, instead, to address the immediate realities of the crisis we face. That starts with a correct understanding of what the climate and the nature crises are doing to us. They are not a handy justification for a bunch of things we wanted to do anyway, or, as Biden once put it, 'when I hear climate, I think jobs'. But nor, for most people here, most of the time, is climate change the Hollywood story of existential disaster. Instead, it is the slower, steadier accumulation of breakdowns and failures. Food costs more. Insurance costs more. More flights are delayed, more trains fail to run. Power systems break down. Floods worsen. Extreme heat spreads disease and shortens lives. There are existential risks, of course; but the immediate reality is typically of a slow, steady decay. It is in the countryside where these processes are most shockingly visible: the parched fields, the rivers full of shit. The reality of life across rural towns and villages is of deep neglect, stretching back many decades. It has been too easy to dismiss Green votes in rural England as 'Countryfile Tories'. There are certainly tensions inside the Greens, as the New Statesman's recent interview with Polanski's two opponents, MPs Adrian Ramsey and Ellie Chowns, made clear. It will require political skills to navigate through them. But the potential is there, in what sociologist Nic Buret has identified as a 'silent movement' in our countryside, where protests about development can't be dismissed as twee NIMBY-ism. Increasingly, they represent a direct battle for control over what should be common resources. Economic projects that look good in Westminster, like building a new data centre, does little for a local community, creating few jobs, sucking up scarce electricity and water, and repatriating profits back to the US. And the problem of food prices and availability in towns and cities is directly tied to the crisis of farming in our countryside. The problem of water supplies in Oxfordshire is directly tied to the promises made in Washington to US Big Tech, as Labour plans a massive roll-out of those same data centres. The Houthi blockade of the Red Sea raised prices in shops across the world last year, reinforcing the inflationary impacts of the drought in the Panama Canal. In other words, globalisation as we have known it is crumbling, to be replaced by something similarly interconnected, but far more disorderly. Four decades of falling prices as the world opened up and East Asia industrialised is being replaced with chaotic price rises and shortages as climate change bites – and the very success of China disrupts an international order constructed around the dominance of the United States. The instability creates winners, as well as losers. Soaring food prices in the last few years have handed all-time record profits to the four major companies that control 90 per cent of the global trade in grain. The same applies, notoriously, to soaring fossil fuel profits. This is what a real eco-populism can address: 'populism' facing squarely up to the need for redistribution from fat profits and idle hoards of wealth, and 'eco' in taking immediate actions to address insecurity and the steady breakdown of basic systems – like the shocking neglect and underfunding of our care sector. Ideas like a Basic Income for farmers, a campaign now taking root, could be adopted by an eco-populist Green Party. This is a new opportunity. The Greens are second-placed in over 30 Labour-held seats, with slender majorities. Next year's local elections include all 18 London boroughs. A joint Green-independent left campaign could knock many of these over, just as surely as Reform managed in the North, and lay the foundations for plausible victories in a 2029 general election. Privately, London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been warning of the growing risk to Labour's support. Sensing the possibilities, co-operation between the Greens and the left on the ground across cities in England is already happening. We don't know how the two-party system will break down at the next election. We do know the possibilities are real, and include winning a major bloc of Greens and independent lefts MPs. Zack Polanski will struggle in the role of insurgent, the British media always marginalising those outside of Parliament. But they laughed at Farage's electoral history, until he entered the House last summer. In Polanski's campaign, we have, finally, to bottle these new winds into a political programme. [See also: The Green Party's internal war] Related
Daily Mail
4 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Minnesota Senator John Hoffman's wife reveals horror details about shooting from her hospital bed
The brave wife of Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman has shared a hopeful update about his recovery - as she revealed horror details about the shooting from her hospital. Vance Boelter, 57, allegedly broke into the Democratic lawmaker's home and began firing at him and his family at around 2am on Saturday, before going on to kill Democratic State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home eight miles away. When the shooting began, Yvette Hoffman - John's wife - jumped on top of the couple's adult daughter, Hope, in a brave attempt to spare her, her nephew Mat Ollig shared on Facebook. Yvette wound up being struck by eight bullets, and her husband was struck by nine, she told US Sen. Amy Klobuchar in a publicized message on Sunday. One of the rounds narrowly missed the state senator's viral organs, and both he and his wife were rushed to the hospital with serious injuries. Hoffman has since undergone several surgeries, and 'is closer ever hour to being out of the woods,' Yvette told Klobucher, adding that both she and her husband 'are both incredibly lucky to be alive.' She then shared her condolences for Hortman and her husband, saying both she and the state senator 'are gutted and devastated by the loss of Melissa and Mark. 'We have no words,' she said. 'There is never a place for this kind of political hate.' It is believed Boelter, a Trump supporter, was motivated to kill the two Democratic lawmakers for their support of abortion rights, after police uncovered a hit list of about 70 people from his car Saturday morning. Most of the names on that list were Democrats or people with ties to Planned Parenthood or the abortion rights movement, CNN reports. A second hit list with more than a dozen new names was also found during a search of one of Boelter's homes on Saturday as police continued their manhunt for the suspect. Swarms of state troopers, FBI agents, SWAT teams and even a US Marshals Fugitive Task Force were seen descending on a rural Minnesota town on Sunday, going from house to house in search of the suspect. The military-style convoy even traveled in armored vehicles with rooftop snipers, while hundreds of other police officers set up command in Green Isle - near Boelter and his wife Jenny's home. Authorities ultimately located Boelter's car, a Buick that appeared to be dumped in Faxon Township, on Sunday and found a cowboy hot lying on the ground that was identical to one Boelter was wearing in CCTV images released by the FBI. However, police have had no luck finding the fugitive as of 7pm on Sunday. It now remains unclear where the suspected murderer may have run off to, as Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension at Minnesota's Department of Public Safety, noted 'he certainly had a lot of time to be able to cover a lot of distance once we knew that he had escaped from the crime scene.' Police had encountered the gunman fleeing Hortman's home at 3.35am on Saturday and exchanged gunfire with him. Chilling photos showed the suspect donning an unsettling costume mask covering his entire head. Yet officers somehow let the suspect slip through their fingers as he escaped the scene on foot. Police have since received more than 400, and have recovered evidence from his vehicle, Evans said Sunday. 'We continue to conduct interviews on the investigative piece, not only to learn his whereabouts, but also to follow up on the case and gather the information as part of the prosecution related to him,' he added. Authorities have already questioned Boelter's wife, Jenny, who was stopped at a convenience store while driving a car with three other relatives inside near Onamia about 10am on Saturday. She was found with a weapon, ammunition, cash, and passports about 75 miles from where the shootings took place in northern Minneapolis eight hours earlier. More than a dozen officers swarmed Jenny's car during the traffic stop and they were at the scene for two to three hours. Jenny was detained for questioning after officers found the items inside the vehicle, but no one was arrested as she was released. Authorities have since said she and other family members were cooperative with the investigation. Meanwhile, Boelter's best friend and roommate David Carlson told local news outlet KARE11 he was an avid Trump supporter and voted for the Republican candidate. He also described the suspect as a Christian who opposed abortion. In fact, the suspect worked as a pastor and was seen in a newly unearthed video dancing in a church service in Africa. The clip, filmed in February 2023, showed him delivering a passionate testimony about how he met Jesus at the age of 17. 'I met the Lord when I was 17 years old and I gave my life to Jesus Christ,' he says in the clip. He went on to describe naming his five children - who he shares with Jenny - after Christian virtues, Grace, Faith, Hope, Joy, and David, in what he calls a testament to God's blessings on his life. The night before the deadly shooting, Boelter even texted his roommates that he was 'going to be gone for a while'. Carlson, who shared a North Minneapolis home with Boelter, tearfully read aloud text messages from the accused assassin. 'David and Ron, I love you guys,' the eerie note began. 'I made some choices, and you guys don't know anything about this, but I'm going to be gone for a while.' He also said he 'may be dead shortly' and did not wish to involve Carlson or his other roommate Ron Ramsey. Still, Carlson said he was shocked by the news. 'I don't know why he did what he did,' he told KARE 11. 'It's just... it's not Vance... He had lots of friends, trust me, and I wish I could have been there to stop him.' Boelter is now facing both state and federal charges, with authorities announcing on Sunday that there is both a 'nationwide warrant' for Boelter's arrest for the murders and attempted murder at the state level as well as a federal warrant for 'unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.' In the meantime, the community is rallying around Hoffman and his wife. The Parent Teacher Organization for Fernbrook Elementary School in Maple Grove, where Yvette works, even set up an online fundraiser for their medical expenses. 'Our heart s are heavy as we share devastating news regarding a cherished member of our Flyer family, Yvette Hoffman and her husband Sen. John Hoffman,' Principal Jeff Zastrow wrote. 'Mrs. Hoffman is an invaluable part of our Fernbrook community, tirelessly dedicating her time and energy as a support professional. She brings joy, compassion and unwavering support to our students, staff and families every day.' 'As the PTO, we believe in the power of our AMAZING community to rally around those in need,' he continued, adding that the GoFundMe will 'provide immediate and ongoing support to Mrs. Hoffman and Senator Hoffman.'
NBC News
8 hours ago
- NBC News
Search continues for Minnesota suspect and Trump vetoes an Israeli plot: Weekend Rundown
Authorities in Minnesota have mobilized state and local police, SWAT teams and K-9 units across multiple counties as a massive search continues for a 57-year-old man suspected of shooting two state Democratic lawmakers in a targeted attack. Vance Boelter, 57, is accused of committing the 'politically motivated' shootings. State Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were killed Saturday morning at their home. State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were severely injured in a second shooting. Officials say Boelter impersonated law enforcement in order to gain access to the lawmakers' homes. Photos, believed to be of Boelter, show a man at one of the victim's doors wearing a long-sleeve shirt and what looks like a bulletproof vest similar to those worn by law enforcement. Another photo shows a man wearing a cowboy hat walking alone. Authorities on Sunday found what they believe is his vehicle and cowboy hat in Sibley County, where an emergency alert was issued for residents in the area to keep their doors locked and cars secured, NBC affiliate KARE 11 reported. Earlier Sunday, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said on NBC News' 'Meet the Press' that Boelter is believed to still be in the Midwest. 'We believe he's somewhere in the vicinity and that they are going to find him,' she said. 'But right now, everyone is on edge here because we know that this man will kill at a second.' An official who saw a list of names drawn up by Boelter previously told NBC News that it targeted prominent people in Minnesota who advocated for reproductive rights. Trump vetoed Israeli proposal to assassinate Iran's supreme leader President Donald Trump rejected a proposal from Israel in recent days to assassinate Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a U.S. official told NBC News. During an interview on Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu neither directly confirmed nor denied the initial Reuters report about the proposed assassination attempt, but he dismissed what he called 'false reports' regarding discussions between the U.S. and Israel. The news comes as deadly strikes between Israel and Iran intensified, with Iran launching drones as Israel expanded its attacks to include oil depots, missile sites and nuclear infrastructure, killing at least 150 people and leaving hundreds injured, Iran state media said. Iran's retaliatory strikes have killed at least 13 people in Israel to date, including 3 children, Netanyahu's office said. Israeli strikes have deeply wounded Iran's government, leaving it facing a number of questions, including whether it needs to give up on negotiations and rush its nuclear program. A military parade amid turmoil at home and abroad President Donald Trump presided over a parade Saturday celebrating the nation's military power and history, though the event was shadowed by political violence at home and escalating tensions abroad. 'Every other country celebrates their victories,' Trump said as he took the lectern after the parade ended. 'It's about time America did, too. That's what we're doing tonight.' Prone to delivering long, boastful speeches, Trump kept his remarks brief and made the military the focus. Beforehand, critics had warned he would politicize the event for his own purposes. Trump avoided any overt partisan messages, though he seemed to allude at one point to his 'Fight! Fight! Fight!' exhortation after an assassination attempt against him last year. 'Time and again, America's enemies have learned that if you threaten the American people, our soldiers are coming for you,' Trump said. 'Your defeat will be certain. Your demise will be final, and your downfall will be total and complete — because our soldiers never give up, never surrender and never ever quit. They fight, fight, fight and they win, win, win.' Meet the Press Sen. Rand Paul, a leading Republican critic of the sweeping Trump agenda bill, said during an interview on NBC News' 'Meet the Press' that he told President Donald Trump that he is 'not an absolute no' on the package. 'I talked to the president last evening after the parade, and we're trying to get to a better place in our conversations,' Paul said. 'And I've let him know that I'm not an absolute no.' The Kentucky Republican said that in order to vote for the package, he wants lawmakers to separate out a vote on the debt ceiling. The Trump-backed 'big, beautiful bill' is projected to increase the national deficit by about $2.4 trillion over 10 years, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Meanwhile, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., condemned Trump's call to send the National Guard and Marines into Los Angeles amid protests, and criticized the forceful removal of fellow California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla at Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem's news conference last week. 'This is just Donald Trump doing what he wanted to do in the first administration, which was essentially use the military for domestic law enforcement, to make himself look tough,' Schiff said. Politics in brief Welcome to the zoo. That'll be $47 today — ask again tomorrow. How much will it cost to visit a museum, zoo or aquarium this summer? The answer, increasingly, is: It depends. Zoo New England is one of many attractions embracing dynamic pricing systems that were earlier pioneered by airlines, ride-hailing apps and theme parks. While these practices allow operators to lower prices when demand is soft, they also enable the reverse, threatening to squeeze consumers who are increasingly trimming their summer travel budgets. Before the pandemic, less than 1% of attractions surveyed by Arival, a tourism market research and events firm, used variable or dynamic pricing. Today, 17% use variable pricing, in which entry fees are adjusted based on predictable factors such as the day of the week or the season, Arival said. And 6% use dynamic pricing, in which historical and real-time data on weather, staffing, demand patterns and more influence rates. Data-driven pricing can reduce overcrowding by steering budget-minded guests toward dates that are both cheaper and less busy. But steeper prices during peak periods and for short-notice visits could rankle guests — who may see anything less than a top-notch experience as a rip-off. Notable quote We were just so happy that they caught him. This was an evil guy. Grant Hardin's escape from an Arkansas prison last month involved detailed planning, perfect timing and a makeshift outfit designed to mimic a law enforcement uniform. After nearly two weeks on the run, the 'Devil in the Ozarks' was found about 1.5 miles west of the prison. In case you missed it
