George Clooney slams networks that rolled over for Trump in profane rant

Actor, director and producer George Clooney recently threw several jabs at media companies that settled with President Donald Trump rather than fight his lawsuits in court.

During a Tuesday interview with Variety while promoting his new film "Jay Kelly," Clooney not only spoke about the president — who he said he used to "know very well" — but about networks that he feels enabled Trump during the early part of his second term. He specifically harped on CBS, having just played legendary CBS anchor Edward R. Murrow in a stage production of the film Good Night and Good Luck (which he co-wrote, starred in and directed).

At the time of the play, CBS' parent company, Paramount, settled with Trump for $16 million after the president sued them over 60 Minutes' interview with 2024 Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. After Paramount settled, the Trump administration approved the company's proposed merger with media giant Skydance.

CBS' new owners then installed conservative columnist Bari Weiss as the new editor-in-chief of the vaunted network's news division. Weiss recently made headlines for killing a 60 Minutes segment about the Trump administration's deportations to an El Salvadoran mega-prison without due process, though a Canadian broadcaster ran the segment, which then spread virally through social media.

"Bari Weiss is dismantling CBS News as we speak," Clooney told Variety. "I’m worried about how we inform ourselves and how we’re going to discern reality without a functioning press."

Clooney also tore into ABC News, which settled with then-President-elect Trump in December of last year after he sued the network over anchor George Stephanopoulos' assertion that Trump had been found guilty of sexually assaulting writer E. Jean Carroll. U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, who oversaw the case, found Trump liable for sexual abuse and not assault, but clarified that the two were effectively the same thing as the public understood them. Clooney lamented that both major networks chose to concede rather than stand up for themselves.

"If CBS and ABC had challenged those lawsuits and said, 'Go f—— yourself,' we wouldn’t be where we are in the country," Clooney said. "That’s simply the truth."

Click here to read Clooney's full interview.