"My table seats eight, so that's my maximum. Having a small number of guests is the only way to generate good conversation. Besides, your whole house doesn't get wrecked that way." Paul Lynde
September 13, 2017
By: Linda Case Gibbons
Looking at him, he looks like somebody George Clooney would take a shot at.
He's a tad overweight, and doesn't dress up much, but he doesn't need to. He was the man who pushed Donald Trump over the finish line and into the White House.
That's the real reason George Clooney took a shot at Steve Bannon, especially after this week's 60 Minutes interview.
Try though he might, the conservative-baiting Charlie Rose didn't hit a Liberal home run. Just as Trump is Trump, Bannon was Bannon, and he knocked it out of the park.
After the interview, you knew exactly why Donald Trump picked Steve Bannon for his Chief Strategist, and for his wing man.
The guy Charlie was interviewing was another Trump. Smart. Plain speaking. Loyal. And not afraid of Charlie Rose or the media.
He was blunt. He called The Swamp a successful business model for the permanent political class.
He said what others won't, that the Republican Establishment is trying to nullify the 2016 election. And he named names.
A staunch Catholic himself, he told Charlie the Catholic Church supports DACA because the Church is "unable to come to grips with the problems in the Church, and needs illegal aliens to fill the churches."
And when Charlie pulled out some sappy Liberal talking points, Bannon told him, "I don't need to be lectured by a bunch of limousine liberals from the upper east side of New York and the Hamptons." -- Charlie.
He came out as a guy you'd be glad to have next to you in a foxhole.
But that's not what George Clooney sees when he looks at Bannon or Trump. The two men stand for everything Clooney, Liberals, Democrats and Establishment Republicans despise, and none of them will be content until they destroy the man who had the nerve to became president against their wishes. And the man who helped get him there.
So when the Famous-for-Being-Famous Clooney called Bannon a "failed, f***ing screenwriter," it wasn't a surprise. Except for the "screenwriter" part.
Who knew?
"If he'd somehow managed to get his screenplay produced," Clooney told Entertainment Weekly, "he'd still be in Hollywood, still making movies and licking my a** to get me to do one of his stupid a** screenplays."
As if.
After all, Clooney probably thinks, "I'm a director, an actor. I've made it big with Oceans 11, 12 and 13, a source of pride to any actor. I'm Rosemary Clooney's nephew. And, with a little touch of gray at my temples, I look like a politician. Why not act like one?"
So why wouldn't he be the guy to tell Bannon off? The one to call the president a "xenophobic fascist," and an "opportunist," and to describe Trump's immigration policy as "idiotic and intolerant."
As a political activist, Clooney is very passionate. He advocates for open borders and the free flow of refugees over any country's borders.
In May, 2015, he told the BBC that he wanted to help Syria by focusing on Syrian refugees;
In February, 2016, he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and praised her for Germany's open door refugee policy, especially for Syrian refugees;
In a 2016 Sky News interview, he criticized the U.S. for capping the refugee flow into the U.S. to only 10,000 per year, and blasted Trump's plan to build a wall. He said it did not "represent U.S. values."
And then refugees and Islamic terrorists came to where he lives. Clooney. To his home. In England.
And refugees camped out, and hung their laundry on the bushes near his $100 million vacation home in Lake Como, Italy. Then it was a whole different story. And Clooney moved back to the U.S. His wife, his kids, lock, stock and barrel.
"He waited so long for this family," an "insider" confided, "he'll do whatever it takes to keep them safe."
Funny. That's the way the ranchers on the Mexican border in Arizona said they felt, too, when illegal immigrants used their land as a flop house after crossing the border, smuggling drugs, ravaging their homes and threatening their lives. You'd think Clooney would know that. He says he knows what's what.
"They say I'm out of touch. You want to call me a Hollywood liberal? Come at me. I sold ladies shoes, I sold insurance door to door, I..." You get the drift.
"I know every bit of that world, and I know my friends and what they believe. And I know this is not a moment in our history that we'll look back and be proud of. So if I'm not standing on the side I believe to be right, I'd be ashamed."
He's got that right. He's probably glad he's no Steve Bannon. Charlie told us Bannon was the "great manipulator," "Trump's Svengali," "The Grim Reaper," "Propogandist-in-Chief," but here are a couple of things Charlie Rose didn't tell you.
Bannon was an investment banker, a U.S. naval officer, serving on a destroyer, then working stateside at the Pentagon.
He is a graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in urban planning, holds a Master's degree in national security studies from Georgetown University, and a Master of Business Administration, with honors, from Harvard Business School. But all that aside, he hangs in there. And he's a loyal man, whose mantra is, "When you side with a man, you side with him. The good and the bad."
And Bannon does.
As for Clooney? Yeah, the guy is right about one thing. He is "The Hollywood Liberal."
And he just talks the talk.
Hold the line, America.