Megyn Kelly blasts George Clooney in 11-minute rant: 'You’re not fooling anyone'
'What’s the matter, George? Are the Hollywood roles getting a little hard to come by?'
Article content
Conservative commentator Megyn Kelly has tore a strip off of actor George Clooney after the Oscar winner questioned her bona fides as a journalist.
During an interview with actress Patti LuPone for Variety’s Actors on Actors issue, Clooney made a dig at Kelly’s skills as a journalist as he spoke about the importance of journalists “to hold truth to power.”
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Megyn Kelly blasts George Clooney in 11-minute rant: 'You’re not fooling anyone' Back to video
tap here to see other videos from our team.
“I’m not quite sure what she’s done,” he said. “I’ve at least been to Darfur and Sudan and the Congo and been shot at to try and get stories out. And I’m not quite sure what she’s done to be a journalist.”
Clooney came after he included Kelly during the closing montage of his Broadway play Good Night, and Good Luck, in which he plays dogged journalist Edward R. Murrow.
“We only show her words in this play, we don’t tell people what to think. It’s not out of context. We don’t manipulate it. We literally just go, ‘These are your words,'” he said. “We don’t tell people what to think when we show that montage at the end … You see Megyn Kelly, who’s come out and said I’m not a journalist. I didn’t say I was a journalist.”
“Neither is she, by the way,” LuPone swiped.
But Clooney’s remarks didn’t sit well with Kelly, who devoted 11 minutes to picking apart the actor on a segment of her Megyn Kelly Show.
“He’s starring in a play about Edward R. Murrow because Clooney fancies himself a journalist, you see,” she said mockingly in a clip that has been viewed more than 470,000 times on YouTube.
Kelly then criticized Clooney for delaying the release of an opinion piece he wrote for the New York Times last summer in which he called on Joe Biden to drop out of the 2024 presidential race.
“(He) has lots of thoughts about how journalists need to do journalism,” Kelly said. “Like he does it … stumbling upon the biggest story of the decade — that a sitting president is mentally infirm, and ought to be 25th Amendment-ed right out of office and then burying it, saying absolutely nothing for weeks on end.”
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Kelly hit out at Clooney’s “cowardice” for waiting to address Biden’s mental decline after the actor hosted a fundraiser for the former president just weeks before his disastrous debate performance against Donald Trump last June.
“Only after that president humiliates himself on the national stage at a presidential debate and then refuses to step down as the entire Democrat party watches its electoral chances up and down the ticket go swirling down the toilet, (Clooney) finally decides to write an op-ed in The New York Times saying Joe Biden is not up for the job,” Kelly said. “That’s not journalism, George, it’s cowardice, followed by naked partisanship. You’re not fooling anyone.”
Kelly also slammed Clooney’s comments that questioned her experience as a journalist, listing off some of the stories she’s told, including a cake baker in Colorado who refused to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple because it went against their beliefs and profiles she has done on Medal of Honour winners, Patriot Barbie and President Trump.
“None of my stories had any interest for George Clooney … You had no interest in stories that actually probed the minds of regular Americans and found out why they did the things you only had an urge to demonize in your elite Hollywood circles,” Kelly said. “That’s not the kind of fearless journalism you’re talking about … These stories never made it on your radar because you were too busy in your $100 million Lake Como mansion or at one of your five other homes.”
Clooney’s appearance on Broadway also left Kelly scratching her head as she said her criticism of him has “hurt his thin-skinned Hollywood feelings.”
“What’s the matter, George? Are the Hollywood roles getting a little hard to come by as you age and get decidedly more smug and self-congratulatory? I’m just asking,” she said.
In the comments section of her video, Kelly’s fans bashed Clooney, calling him “pompous” and “an idiotic propagandist.”
“Never liked George Clooney and never understood the hype around him. He comes across as smug and self-righteous,” one critic wrote. “Just shut up, George. You and your opinions are nothing special.”
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.