Here are some photos of George Clooney today in Venice. He did a solo photocall ahead of the Venice Film Festival’s opening ceremony, which is where he will receive the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement. George looks tan and slender, but once you realize that he has a bad back, you can always see it in photos. It’s the way he stands, the way he carries himself. Anyway, in addition to the photocall, George did a Q&A session, and he was obviously asked about American politics. He literally became a French citizen so he wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences of his political actions, but sure.

Why he doesn’t direct nowadays: “The only reason I’m not directing, which I love doing, is because I have two nine-year-old kids, and in order for me to spend time with them, I can’t. You know, if I act in a movie, it’s three months, and I can go and come and go and come back. When you direct a movie, it’s a year, wherever you are, and there’s no traveling back and forth, so I can’t do that anymore. The last thing I did was this play last year on Broadway, and that took away, that took us all away for a period of time. And I can’t really pull the kids out of school anymore, so I’m really happy doing this. It’s fun to be an actor again. I’m enjoying it, actually.”

The state of American politics: “I’m always very optimistic about things. We’re at a moment in time that’s unfortunate… that’s an understatement. I do believe that we’re going to get through all of this. I’m old enough to have been through 1968 in the states when every city in the United States was set on fire, and we lost Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the same year. There was tons of violence. The capital was surrounded with tanks. We’ve had some other difficult times, but this is one of them.”

The midterms: “There’s a great word, kakistocracy, which is a country run by the least qualified people. I think maybe we have a kakistocracy right now, but we’ll get through it, and we will have an election in November that should be a check and balance, and then in 2028, with any luck, we’ll have some restoration into some normalcy.”

On Whiskey Pete Hegseth: Clooney slammed what he called “the idea of cruelty” at the heart of the current administration, reserving special criticism for U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and his recent post deriding women and Canada’s cadet program. “You see what the Secretary of Defense just tweeted out a picture about women in the military in Canada, and you’re going, ‘What’s wrong with you? Where’s the sense of decency in all of this?’ And I’m ashamed of all of that, but we will get through it, and we will, we will come out better on the other side.”

On AI: “We’re going through a revolution in our industry… AI is going to be a very big part of this industry. It’s going to hurt us in a lot of ways. If you’re a visual effects supervisor, you’re going to have trouble coming up because… a lot of jobs are going to be taken away, probably about 30% of the jobs. I don’t know what the real number is, but there’s going to be a big number of jobs going to be taken away, and we’re kind of on our back foot on it. We’re not taking the lead on it. People are just now starting to, so it’s going to be a complicated time in our industry, and so we’re going to have to find ways to survive.”

[From Deadline]

When someone ratf-cks an election, insults the first Black woman to score a national party’s presidential nomination, enables fascism and then f–ks off to another country to avoid the political consequences, you’ll have to forgive me for thinking that George Clooney is full of it. “We’re going to get through all of this…” Who is “we” when he’s living in France and Italy? And even if the midterms go the Democrats’ way – a huge IF – then no, it will not be a restoration of normalcy, you moron. I’m consistently aghast by Clooney’s lack of urgency when it comes to speaking about Republicans as well – it seems that nothing they do is worthy of a New York Times op-ed. Really makes you think.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.