
Seth Meyers skips asking George Clooney about Biden's mental decline, not recognizing him at fundraiser
NBC 'Late Night' host Seth Meyers interviewed Hollywood star George Clooney on Monday but failed to question the actor about the report that former President Joe Biden failed to recognize the a-list actor at his own 2024 campaign fundraiser or any of the news about the ex-president's mental decline in office.
Just weeks after CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios journalist Alex Thompson revealed in their book 'Original Sin' that Biden allegedly failed to recognize Clooney backstage at a June fundraiser last year, Meyers chose not to ask the actor about the incident — or even mention the former president during the entire interview.
Advertisement
Approximately one month following the reported incident, Clooney wrote a guest essay in The New York Times calling for Biden to be replaced as the Democratic nominee due to his declining mental acuity.
Rather than questioning the Hollywood star about the reported fundraiser incident, Meyers centered the interview around Clooney's acting career and his recent Tony Award nomination for his play 'Good Night, and Good Luck.'
3 NBC 'Late Night' host Seth Meyers interviewed Hollywood star George Clooney on Monday but failed to tell the a-list actor the bombshell report that former President Biden failed to recognize him at his own 2024 campaign fundraiser.
Lloyd Bishop/NBC via Getty Images
His omission of Biden was first flagged by Mediaite.
Advertisement
Despite all the attention 'Original Sin' has generated, liberal comedians Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert have not mentioned any of the revelations, according to Grabien transcripts.
The three hosts were all strong supporters of Biden's presidency, and Kimmel and Colbert helped fundraise for him last year.
3 The interview comes weeks after CNN host Jake Tapper and Axios journalist Alex Thompson detailed in their new book 'Original Sin' that Biden allegedly failed to recognize Clooney backstage at a June 2024 campaign fundraiser.
REUTERS
The liberal hosts have all welcomed Biden for friendly interviews, the last time being on 'Late Night with Seth Meyers' in February 2024, just days after the release of the Hur report.
Advertisement
Meyers gently broached the subject of Biden's age before quickly moving on to other topics.
Special Counsel Robert Hur, who conducted the investigation into Biden's mishandling of classified documents, wrote in his report that he declined to bring charges against the former president in part because a jury would likely not find him guilty due to a perception that he was a 'sympathetic, well-meaning elderly man with a poor memory.'
3 One month after the reported incident, Clooney published a guest essay in the New York Times calling for Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential election due to his declining mental state.
Lloyd Bishop/NBC via Getty Images
Meyers called Hur's comments a 'gratuitous hypothetical' and stressed that Hur was a 'Republican attorney' who 'was originally appointed by Trump.'
Advertisement
'If that kind of language was appropriate in a legal finding, then prosecutors could have done the same thing to Trump,' Meyers said before repeatedly drawing attention to President Donald Trump's mental acuity.
Fox News' Joseph Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
The sequel to Trump's so-called travel ban is not an improvement on the original
Ahead of the Republican presidential nominating contests in Iowa and New Hampshire in 2016, Donald Trump was looking to solidify his position as the likely GOP nominee. To that end, the future president came up with a stunning proposal: As 2015 neared its end, Trump declared his support for 'a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States' until such time that he was satisfied that U.S. officials understood 'what the hell is going on.' As regular readers know, it was a bigoted applause line — which his base eagerly embraced. It also turned into a campaign promise the Republican was eager to keep. On only his seventh day in the White House, Trump signed a policy that became known as the 'travel ban,' sparking outrage, bureaucratic chaos, family hardships and a series of messy legal fights. On the first day of Joe Biden's term, the then-Democratic president undid his predecessor's policy, signing a proclamation titled 'Ending Discriminatory Bans on Entry to The United States.' More than four years later, Trump is not only restoring his old policy, he's also adding to it. NBC News reported: In a return of one of the most controversial policies of his first term, President Donald Trump signed a proclamation Wednesday banning nationals from a dozen countries. ... Nationals of 12 countries will be barred from entering the United States: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. It's difficult to summarize all of the granular details of the White House's latest move in a blog post — Team Trump published relatively detailed overviews online overnight, and NBC News' report is thorough — but in addition to the aforementioned 12 countries, seven other countries (Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela) will face partial travel restrictions. There will apparently be some exceptions for athletes competing in international events, as well as those who've qualified for Afghan special immigrant visas. The administration's policy is scheduled to take effect shortly after midnight on Monday, but whether the White House will change, overhaul or worsen the strategy between now and then remains to be seen. As the world begins assessing the practical, geopolitical and moral implications of Trump's new — but not improved — policy, let no one say this is surprising. On the campaign trail ahead of the 2024 election, the Republican boasted about blocking Muslims from entering the country during his first term, telling voters, 'We didn't want people coming into our country who really love the idea of blowing our country up.' Months later, Trump assured the electorate that he intended to restore and expand his original policy. (He vowed this would happen on the first day of his second term, though he missed his own deadline by 135 days.) But the fact that the incumbent president is following through on a misguided promise does not make a bad idea good. Indeed, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons described the White House's gambit as 'new Muslim ban' in a written statement. 'President Trump's own statement makes it clear exactly what this new executive order is: the latest attempt to institute his unpopular and immoral Muslim ban which was thrown out time and again by the courts in his first term,' the Delaware senator said. 'Improving our national security should be a bipartisan goal, but fear and bigotry do not keep Americans safe. What this will do instead is cause chaos, inflict pain, and break apart families, just as his prior attempts did. This order should be reversed, and Congress needs to reassert our role by passing laws that make our immigration system secure, effective and humane.' To be sure, some of the countries affected by the president's directive have Muslim populations, but some do not. That said, the White House's official 'fact sheet' on the policy specifically included this quote from Trump: 'We will restore the travel ban, some people call it the Trump travel ban, and keep the radical Islamic terrorists out of our country that was upheld by the Supreme Court.' There were already some indications that some Muslim-American voters were feeling buyers' remorse after having backed Trump last fall. The Republican's latest move probably won't help on this front. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
15 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US Supreme Court backs Catholic group's bid for Wisconsin unemployment tax exemption
By John Kruzel WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday backed a bid by an arm of a Catholic diocese in Wisconsin for a religious exemption from the state's unemployment insurance tax in the latest ruling in which the justices took an expansive view of religious rights. The 9-0 ruling overturned a lower court's decision that had rejected the tax exemption bid by the Catholic Charities Bureau - a nonprofit corporation operating as the social ministry arm of the Catholic diocese in the city of Superior - and four entities that the bureau oversees. At issue was whether Wisconsin's denial of the tax exemption violated the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment guarantee of free exercise of religion, as well as its separation of church and state. Under Wisconsin's unemployment insurance program, the state collects taxes from employers and uses the revenue to provide a temporary source of income to eligible jobless workers. "The First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religions and subjects any state-sponsored denominational preference to strict scrutiny," liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court. The Wisconsin court's decision "imposed a denominational preference by differentiating between religions based on theological lines," Sotomayor added. The federal government and all states exempt certain religious entities from having to pay into unemployment insurance programs. Most of these laws, including Wisconsin's, require that organizations be "operated primarily for religious purposes" to be eligible for a religious exemption. The Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2024 rejected the tax exemption bid by Catholic Charities Bureau and its subsidiaries. Although the groups "assert a religious motivation behind their work," that court found, their activities were "primarily charitable and secular" and thus were not "operated primarily for religious purposes." The Catholic Charities Bureau since 1917, it said on its website, has provided "services to the poor, the disadvantaged, the disabled, the elderly and children with special needs as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church in the Diocese of Superior." The Catholic Charities Bureau and its subsidiaries do not require their employees to be of any particular religion, nor do they seek to instill Catholic beliefs in those receiving their services. Among the subsidiary groups involved in the case are organizations that provide services to people with disabilities including job placements and training, as well as daily living services and home visitation, according to court papers. During the Great Depression, Wisconsin in 1932 became the first U.S. state to enact an unemployment compensation law. Three years later, Democratic U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt signed into law the landmark Social Security Act of 1935 that established, among other programs, a cooperative federal-state unemployment insurance plan that would eventually lead to all U.S. states enacting their own unemployment relief programs. The Supreme Court, with its 6-3 conservative majority, has taken an expansive view of religious rights in a series of rulings in recent years. In May, however, the court in a 4-4 ruling blocked a bid led by two Catholic dioceses to establish in Oklahoma the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school in a major case involving religious rights in American education. In 2017, the court in a Missouri case ruled that churches and other religious entities cannot be flatly denied public money based on their religious status - even in states whose constitutions explicitly ban such funding. In 2020, it endorsed Montana tax credits that helped pay for students to attend religious schools. In 2021, the court ruled in favor of a Catholic Church-affiliated agency that sued after Philadelphia refused to place children for foster care with the organization because it barred same-sex couples from applying to become foster parents. In 2022, it backed two Christian families in their challenge to a Maine tuition assistance program had excluded private religious schools. Also in 2022, it ruled that a Washington state public school district violated the rights of a Christian high school football coach who was suspended for refusing to stop leading prayers with players on the field after games.
Yahoo
16 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump and Xi hold long-awaited trade call
President Donald Trump held a long-awaited phone call Thursday with China's Xi Jinping, a person familiar with the matter said, as the two leaders tussle over trade policy. The White House did not immediately confirm the call, which was also reported by Chinese state media. The call comes after a long period of silence between the leaders, and the discrepancy in how each side was talking — or not talking — about the call ahead of time only underscored a widening gulf between the world's two largest economies. As CNN reported ahead of the call, Chinese officials — who were deeply wary of Trump's unpredictability and track record of putting foreign leaders in awkward or embarrassing situations — had put off a phone call, according to people familiar, even as Trump stated on multiple occasions this spring that he expected to speak with Xi soon. The presiden's Oval Office ambushes of Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa caught the attention of officials in China, those people added, and officials wanted to avoid anything similar, even in a private conversation. But Trump regards securing a new agreement with Beijing both as a critical component of his broader trade agenda and as a necessary follow-up from his first term, when trade deals with China got derailed during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is story has been updated with additional information.