George Clooney has responded to the White House calling his acting a “war crime”, saying it was time for“vigorous debate”, not “infantile name calling”.
American president Donald Trump has received widespread backlash for threatening to obliterate Iran in the hours before reaching a fragile ceasefire to pause the US-Israeli war on Tuesday.
“A whole civilisation will die tonight, never to be brought back again,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform hours before his deadline for Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or face destruction.
Clooney condemned Trump’s threat while addressing high school students at an event in Italy’s Cuneo, saying: “Some say Donald Trump is fine. But if anyone says he wants to end a civilisation, that’s a war crime.”
“You can still support the conservative point of view, but there must be a line of decency, and we must not cross it,” the 64-year-old actor added.
In response, White House communications director Steven Cheung told The Independent: “The only person committing war crimes is George Clooney for his awful movies and terrible acting ability.”
The Ocean’s Eleven star has now fired back at the White House. “Families are losing their loved ones. Children have been incinerated. The world’s economy is on a knife-edge. This is a time for vigorous debate at the highest levels. Not for infantile name-calling,” he told Deadline on Thursday.
“I’ll start. A war crime is alleged ‘when there’s intent to physically destroy a nation’, as defined by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute. What is the administration’s defence? (Besides calling me a failed actor, which I happily agree with, having starred in Batman and Robin?).”
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The US and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire to pause a conflict that has destabilised the Middle East and disrupted global energy supplies. However, hostilities have not fully ceased, with violations continuing.
At the Cuneo event, according to Italian news outlet ANSA, Clooney also said he was “worried about Nato”.
The military alliance “has ensured that Europe, but also the rest of the world, has been safe”, the Oscar winner said. “Dismantling an institution like this worries me. Aside from many mistakes, I believe the US [with Nato] has also done many extraordinary things that have stood the test of time.”
A vocal Democrat, Clooney has long traded criticisms with the US president in public and offered commentary on the political climate in the country. Trump has previously described the three-time Golden Globe winner as a failed movie star and one of the “worst political prognosticators of all time”.
“Clooney got more publicity for politics than he did for his very few, and totally mediocre, movies,” Trump previously said on Truth Social, while referencing how Clooney had “dumped” Joe Biden by urging the former president to drop out of the 2024 election.
“He wasn’t a movie star at all, he was just an average guy who complained, constantly, about common sense in politics,” he added.
The president has also criticised Clooney for taking French citizenship while describing the European nation as being in the “midst of a major crime problem because of their absolutely horrendous handling of immigration”.
In December, it was reported that Clooney, his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, and their two children had secured French citizenship.
At the time, Clooney responded to Trump, saying that he “totally agrees” with him about one thing. “We have to make America great again. We’ll start in November,” Clooney said in a statement, per Deadline. He was referring to the US midterm elections.
