The Clooney Shakedown of Biden gets worse: Biden caves to Clooney on the ICC
It's bad enough that actor George Clooney had the temerity to call the White House to complain about the U.S. foreign policy stance on the International Criminal Court's planned arrest warrant of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a U.S. ally.
The guy, after all, is an actor. He did it to make his wife happy, the wife apparently dispatching him to do it since she helped write the plans for the warrant, and faced sanctions. Perhaps the loudly liberated woman was too cowardly to call them up on her own.
But now we learn that Biden actually caved to Clooney, changing U.S. foreign policy to suit Herodias, or rather, Amal Clooney.
The GOP says there was a causal relationship.
1. ICC issues arrest warrant for Netanyahu — led by Amal Clooney.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 6, 2024
2. George Clooney — husband of Amal — calls top Biden aides.
3. Biden suddenly reverses position, opposes House effort to sanction ICC.
Clooney is hosting a Biden fundraiser later this month. QUID PRO QUO? pic.twitter.com/W6IZzstoln
And yes, fundraising was involved. The Mercury News, or, Bay Area News Group, reports that yes, Clooney's still coming to that fundraiser for Joe Biden.
George Clooney is still expected to attend a star-studded June 15 fundraiser for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, even after a report raised questions about the actor’s call to the White House last month to complain about the president criticizing work his wife was involved in — the International Criminal Court issuing arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for the war in Gaza.
The Washington Post, which reported on Clooney’s call to the White House, said there were concerns among some Biden campaign officials that the actor would drop out of the marquee event in Los Angeles, which is also expected to include former president Barack Obama, late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel and actor Julia Roberts.
That raises the possibility that the act a quid pro quo, or something resembling a bribe.
If true, it would be consistent with Biden's other behavior, around, for example, Hunter Biden, where acts were exchanged for cash with foreign characters and phone calls were made. And yes, Amal is foreign, a U.K. citizen.
This article from Al-Monitor, dated June 4, noted that Biden was vehemently opposed to sanctions on the ICC and is willing to defy 42 congressional Democrats in order to take that extremist position.
US lawmakers in the House of Representatives passed legislation Tuesday that would sanction the International Criminal Court for seeking arrest warrants for senior Israeli leaders, setting up a potential showdown between the US president and congressional Democrats.
The White House has previously said it “strongly opposes” new sanctions on the ICC. The stance pits President Joe Biden against Democrats in Congress who said they want a bipartisan response to ICC prosecutor Karim Khan's recent announcement that he is pursuing arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity linked to the war in Gaza.
If Clooney made his phone call on or before that date, then the possibility of quid pro quo is even stronger. Right now, we don't have the timeline, but the GOP, for what it's worth, is arguing that there was a policy shift after the Clooney intervention.
Yet favoring sanctions on ICC is a mainstream position, and a proper one for the U.S. to take. Wanting the warrant to go through is what the crazies of Hamas would like. While we know that Biden has been reportedly conniving to replace Netanyahu, it still would be normal to not want our U.S. allies to be arrested as war criminals when they are at war to defend themselves from terrorists who intentionally stick women and children out front as human shields and hog all the foreign aid food for themselves, as their big beer guts seen in pictures of surrendered Hamas fightes indicate. It's also self-preservation if nothing else from the U.S. point of view.
If Israel's leaders are war criminals and we are helping Israel's leaders, the ICC, feeling high and mighty, will soon be issuing arrest warrants for U.S. leaders in the Biden administration next, and maybe reaching back to the Trump and Obama administrations, too. We can throw every world leader who resists terrorism in some way in jail by their logic, and all will be hunky dory.
But that's not what we see from Biden, who seems to want to get through his fundraiser with Clooney first, changing U.S. positions on the ICC to oppose any sanctions on this overreach.
Any questions as to why the U.S. has lost respect in the world? Terrorists themselves must be rubbing their hands together with glee at this sorry specter of venality and weakness, U.S. foreign policy being set by the likes of a Hollywood movie actor whose wife is complaining, instead of its own principles and self-interest.
Image: Michael Vlasaty, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED