Avid Hillary Clinton supporter George Clooney actually had his hopes set on Joe Biden for the 2016 presidential election and even offered to work on his campaign, it has been revealed.
The A-list actor, who hosted a lavish $353,400-a-couple fundraiser for Clinton in his home last year, told the former vice president he was willing to provide ‘any and all assistance’ to get him on the ballot.
The revelation is made in the 74-year-old’s new memoir, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose – where Biden implicitly criticizes Clinton’s unrelenting campaign.
And in a pointed dig, he makes note of the fact that he was the more popular politician among Hollywood celebs – specifically the Clooneys – who were presumed to be hardcore Hillary fans during the election.
‘An executive in the entertainment industry had insisted that I had more support in the Hollywood community than Hillary,’ Biden writes.
‘He said I could raise money without a problem. George Clooney got in touch with Steve Ricchetti soon after that.’
I’m with HIM: Joe Biden reveals George Clooney offered to serve on his presidential campaign in his new book, Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose. Above they are pictured during a meeting at the White House in 2009
In 2015, Clooney told Biden’s chief of staff: ‘I love Joe Biden, and if he decided to do this I will step up with any and all assistance I can provide.
‘I think I’ve proved I’m a pretty good fund-raiser, so that’s all anyone asks me to do. But I am invested in this. I am willing to take a campaign role if you want me.’
Biden would soon announce he was not going to seek the Democratic nomination.
Clooney then publicly endorsed Clinton six months later in an email penned to her supporters calling the former secretary of state the ‘one consistent voice’ in the election.
And in April 2016, the Hollywood star and wife Amal hosted an extravagant fundraiser for Hillary in their Los Angeles home which was attended by approximately 150 guests including Jane Fonda, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia di Rossi, Jim Parsons and Vogue’s Anna Wintour – as well as dozens of Bernie Sanders supporters who picketed the event.
Clinton reportedly took in $15million for her campaign that weekend between Clooney’s fundraiser and an event the previous night in San Francisco.
But when she lost it was a different story. In an interview this September, Clooney turned on Hillary.
The Ocean’s 13 actor told the Daily Beast he did not believe she was the ‘right person to be president,’ and admitted he supported her ‘because by the time we did the fundraiser, the primary was over at that point and it was time to get on with picking someone to move forward.’
![George Clooney (right) is pictured with Hillary Clinton on Instagram. He spoke in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Beast in September and admitted Clinton was 'qualified' to be president, but wasn't a 'skilled communicator'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/08/21/46245CBD00000578-5063799-image-a-2_1510177667719.jpg)
George Clooney (right) is pictured with Hillary Clinton on Instagram. He spoke in a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Beast in September and admitted Clinton was ‘qualified’ to be president, but wasn’t a ‘skilled communicator’
![George and Amal hosted an extravagant fundraiser for Hillary in their Los Angeles home which was attended by approximately 150 guests including Jane Fonda, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia di Rossi, Jim Parsons and Vogue's Anna Wintour](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/08/21/46245CA500000578-5063799-image-a-10_1510178011745.jpg)
![Amal, speaking at the glamorous fundraiser](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/08/21/46245CA100000578-5063799-image-m-9_1510178003923.jpg)
George and Amal hosted an extravagant fundraiser for Hillary in their Los Angeles home which was attended by approximately 150 guests including Jane Fonda, Ellen DeGeneres and Portia di Rossi, Jim Parsons and Vogue’s Anna Wintour
![150 guests dined on salad, followed by Santa Barbara spot prawn risotto, and a choice of beef tenderloin or Chilean sea bass. The night cost guests $353,400 per couple](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/09/13/46245CA900000578-5063799-image-a-6_1510233995819.jpg)
150 guests dined on salad, followed by Santa Barbara spot prawn risotto, and a choice of beef tenderloin or Chilean sea bass. The night cost guests $353,400 per couple
Biden also makes subtle jabs at Clinton throughout his book, stating he was confident he could have taken her down had he decided to run.
In early 2015, when his plans to run were still up in the air, Clinton became vigilant of Biden’s moves.
He reveals a meeting the two had – and details how she offered an implied threat that she could not control her own supporters.
During a meeting in February 2015 at his Naval Observatory residence, she ‘had an entirely new agenda’ Biden writes.
‘She started off telling me what a good vice president I had been, how much I had done for the country in my career…Then she pretty much asked me straight up if I was going to jump in.’
Biden told her he was not in a position to make the decision at the moment. His son’s health was deteriorating but he did not tell her the full extent of the cancer the former soldier was battling.
‘But if I ran, I told her, I would not run a negative campaign. She said the same,’ he writes, but then she said in an implicit threat: ‘Although some of our supporters can get out of hand sometimes, it would not be me.’
That summer, when the vice president started to receive calls from people encouraging him to run, he reveals there were also ‘a few different kinds of messages being sent my way through the press.
”I just want the vice president to do what’s right for him and his family,’ Hillary said at a campaign stop in Iowa,’ he writes.
![Revelations: Joe Biden spells out his uncomfortable decision not to run against Hillary Clinton and speaks of how he feared he could not control his anger if the death of his son Beau was used against him](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/08/21/4623F84D00000578-5063799-image-a-6_1510177720134.jpg)
Revelations: Joe Biden spells out his uncomfortable decision not to run against Hillary Clinton and speaks of how he feared he could not control his anger if the death of his son Beau was used against him
Hillary went on to sing his praises saying she had a great deal of admiration and affection for him, but by then, Biden says, ‘the opposition research had already started on me.’
He does not say who it was from but he writes elsewhere of the ‘Clinton machine’ which Obama barely beat.
Biden reveals he later became the target of a political hit job in the media after a there was a story published about the community policing crime bill that he had created under Bill Clinton’s term which the president had once heralded as a great step forward.
‘He was now calling it a big mistake. That was followed by a story alleging I was cozy with the banking and credit card industry when I was a senator,’ Biden writes.
‘And Clinton backers sent the signal that they would not stop at voting records and policies if I did get in the race.’
Biden continued to gain momentum in the polls which ultimately put Clinton’s team on their toes.
‘The head of AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) was saying nice things about me, which was causing great consternation at Hillary’s headquarters,’ he writes.
![At the same time. A group of 100 Bernie Sanders supporters showered Clinton's motorcade with 1,000 single-dollar bills as she drove into the Clooney residence on Saturday](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/09/13/46245CC500000578-5063799-image-a-7_1510234007320.jpg)
At the same time. A group of 100 Bernie Sanders supporters showered Clinton’s motorcade with 1,000 single-dollar bills as she drove into the Clooney residence on Saturday
![A fundraiser for Sanders also took place in the area, with tickets going for a far-cheaper $27 a pop](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/11/09/13/46245CB900000578-5063799-A_fundraiser_for_Sanders_also_took_place_in_the_area_with_ticket-a-9_1510235184932.jpg)
A fundraiser for Sanders also took place in the area, with tickets going for a far-cheaper $27 a pop
Her team began placing calls to his aides which he described as ‘fishing expeditions,’ in which they would ask: ‘So what are you guys up to? This isn’t for real, is it?’
Although Biden had been making headway for months, he still hadn’t made an official decision about entering the race.
In the immediate aftermath of Beau’s death, just thinking about running for president was ‘beyond me,’ he says.
Beau had been his biggest supporter, having encouraged him to run from the get-go. But throughout the year, Biden struggled with his own grief and often doubted he had the emotional strength to campaign.
‘If Beau had never gotten sick, we would already be running. This is something we would’ve done together, with enthusiasm. The thought of doing it without him was painful. But as the days passed, the idea of not running started to feel like letting him down, like letting everybody down,’ he writes.
As the election year drew near, and there had been no official word of Biden’s decision to enter the race, Beau’s death inevitably became a political pawn.
In October 2015, Politico published a story titled: ‘EXCLUSIVE: Biden himself leaked word of his son’s dying wish,’ which stated: ‘Joe Biden has been making his 2016 deliberations all about his late son since August.’
‘I should have seen this coming, I guess,’ Biden writes. ‘The Politico story exceeded even my worst expectations of what the opposition was going to be like. The idea that I would use my son’s death to political advantage was sickening.’
Biden made up his mind a month later, and announced he would not be running in the 2016 presidential race.
This Thursday he told Oprah Winfrey in an interview aired on ABC’s GMA show that ‘I have a regret that I am not president’.
His memoir, which comes with a list of the policies he would have run on, is likely to be seen as part of an exploration of a possible 2020 bid.