Clooney: Rid Politics of Big Money, So I Don't Have to Raise It

George Clooney would like to get big money out of politics—so he doesn't have to raise it. As the AP reports, Clooney hosted two weekend fundraisers in California on behalf of Hillary Clinton. Donations for attendees at an event in San Francisco topped out at $353,000 per couple, which Clooney acknowledges is an "obscene amount of money." The event even drew pro-Bernie Sanders demonstrators, Clooney recounted Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. When he went to talk with them, he said, they called him a corporate shill. "That's one of the funnier things you could say about me," the Oscar-winner said, though he conceded protesters had a valid point on a different matter. "Their T-shirts said, you know, 'You sucked as Batman,'" said Clooney, the star of 1997's Batman & Robin. "And I was like, 'Well, you kind of got me on that one.'"

Of Sanders, Clooney says "what he's saying in this election is important if you're a Democrat" and, per Politico, he hopes Sanders "stays in for the entire election." Clooney would gladly raise money for him if he became the Democratic nominee, but is supporting Clinton because of her work as secretary of state and efforts to avert a humanitarian crisis ahead of South Sudan's independence. Clooney faulted Clinton for not better explaining where the money she is raising goes. Most of it, he said, would end up being spent on down-ballot races including those for the Senate, which will confirm the next president's picks for the Supreme Court. If the right justice is confirmed for the spot now open on the court, Clooney said, political campaigns could "get this obscene, ridiculous amount of money out so I never have to do a fundraiser again." (More George Clooney stories.)