George Clooney has responded after Donald Trump criticized the actor and his wife Amal Clooney for receiving French citizenship.
Trump lashed out on Truth Social after the news was revealed earlier this week, writing, “George and Amal Clooney, two of the worst political prognosticators of all time, have officially become citizens of France which is, sadly, in the midst of a major crime problem because of their absolutely horrendous handling of immigration, much like we had under Sleepy Joe Biden.”
The president continued, “Remember when Clooney, after the now infamous debate, dumped Joe during a fundraiser, only to go onto the side of another stellar candidate, Jamala(K!), who is now fighting it out with the worst governor in the Country, including Tim Waltz, Gavin Newscum, for who is going to lead the Democrats to their future defeat. Clooney got more publicity for politics than he did for his very few, and totally mediocre, movies. He wasn’t a movie star at all, he was just an average guy who complained, constantly, about common sense in politics. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, Clooney replied, “I totally agree with the current president. We have to make America great again. We’ll start in November.”
Earlier this week, France’s Ministry of Justice confirmed that the Clooney family received their naturalization orders in official documents published over the weekend. George will retain his American citizenship, while Amal — who was naturalized under her maiden name Amal Alamuddin — is British-Lebanese. Their two children were born in London.
The Clooneys spend a significant portion of their lives in the south of France, where they purchased an estate in 2021. The actor cited France’s privacy laws as a primary draw. “I was worried about raising our kids in L. A., in the culture of Hollywood,” he told Esquire. “I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France — they kind of don’t give a shit about fame. I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids.”
Trump and Clooney have traded barbs over the years, and the actor is famously very vocal about politics and the state of the U.S. Last year, he penned a New York Times op-ed calling for former president Joe Biden bow out of the 2024 presidential election. In November, Clooney confirmed that he stood behind the op-ed, but thought it was a mistake for Kamala Harris to step in.
“We had a chance,” he told CBS’ Sunday Morning. “I wanted there to be, as I wrote in the op-ed, a primary. Let’s battle-test this quickly and get it up and going.”
He continued, “I think the mistake with it being Kamala is she had to run against her own record. It’s very hard to do if the point of running is to say, ‘I’m not that person.’ It’s hard to do, and so she was given a very tough task. I think it was a mistake, quite honestly. But we are where we are. We were gonna lose more House seats, they say. So I don’t know. To not do it would be to say, ‘I’m not gonna tell the truth.’”
