George Clooney talks Donald Trump, Black Lives Matter, and fatherhood in new interview
George Clooney might not putting himself out there politically in the same way as The Rock, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have a future on Capitol Hill.
In an expansive interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Clooney discusses everything from proposing to his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, to texting Barack Obama. Clooney even opens up about housing a Yazidi refugee, and being a new father to twins.
But what really sticks out his how political he got on a wide range of issues including, of course, Donald Trump.
On the first -- and only -- time he met Donald Trump
"I was sitting down at a restaurant in New York [several years ago] and he came in and we talked for a while," he recalled. "I'd had neck surgery, and he said, 'I'll give you the name of a doctor,' and he wrote me a couple of times with the name. Then he went on Larry King Liveand told him I was very short. I'm 5-foot-11 — I'm not the tallest actor in the world, but I'm not short. That made me laugh."
On Black Lives Matter and what needs to happen next, politically
“It would be best for the country if some of these Republicans — and some of them I’m very good friends with, actually — stood up [to him],” Clooney says in a late August phone call. “There’s an important distinction that doesn’t get said enough — the difference between Black Lives Matter and the KKK and the skinheads and the alt-right is this: Black Lives Matter was protesting in support of racial equality. Period. Sometimes it got out of hand, absolutely. But that’s what they were doing. You can never say, ‘Well, those guys were bad and these guys were bad.’ And to hear those words come out of the president of the United States, that is a great crime.”
On making the leap into public office
“I’d like to not think I would be in politics,” he says when asked about his aspiration for elected office, his tortured syntax making this declaration so much less convincing than his other comments. “I’d like to think that would make my life miserable. I don’t really think about that. But I do think you always have to participate, in your town and your country and the world.”
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