George Clooney has accused Donald Trump of committing a war crime over his threat that "an entire civilisation will be gone tonight" in reference to Iran, drawing a swift and dismissive response from the White House.
Speaking on Wednesday to 3,000 high school students in Cuneo, Italy, at an event organised by the Clooney Foundation for Justice, the 64-year-old actor said: "Some people say Donald Trump is fine. But if someone says they want to eliminate a civilisation, that is a war crime. You can hold a conservative view, but there has to be a line of decency and we shouldn't cross it."
The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, responded by telling the Independent that "the only person committing war crimes is George Clooney with his horrible movies and his terribly bad acting."
In a separate statement to Deadline on the same day, Clooney raised the stakes, invoking the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute directly. "Families are losing their people. Children have been burned alive. The global economy is on a knife's edge. This is a moment for serious conversation at the highest level. Not childish name-calling. I'll start. A war crime is the intent to 'physically destroy a nation,' as defined by the Genocide Convention and the Rome Statute. What does the government say to that, beyond calling me a failed actor, which I accept happily, having appeared in Batman and Robin?"
Clooney is a long-standing Democratic supporter and donor whose political outspokenness is widely attributed to the influence of his journalist father and his wife, human rights lawyer Amal Clooney. In 2025 he drew considerable attention with a New York Times opinion piece calling on then-president Joe Biden to withdraw from the presidential race.
Despite their current animosity, Clooney has said the two men were once on friendly terms. Speaking to Variety last year, he recalled: "I knew him very well. He used to call me a lot and had tried to help me get into a hospital to see a back surgeon. I would see him at clubs and restaurants. He is a great clown. He was. That changed."
Trump, who has a long record of clashing with Hollywood, has given as good as he gets, variously calling Clooney a "second-rate star," a "third-rate actor," a "fake actor" who "never managed to make a great film," and a "traitor." In January, he criticised France's decision to grant Clooney and his family French citizenship, describing the couple as "two of the worst political commentators of all time" and dismissing Clooney as "just an average guy who kept complaining about political issues."
Clooney, for his part, appears unfazed. Addressing the US midterm elections due on 3 November, he told the Hollywood Reporter: "I completely agree with the current president. We need to make America great again. We'll start in November."