George Clooney defends the president after casino magnate Steve Wynn calls Obama an 'a—hole'

George Clooney defends the president after casino magnate Steve Wynn calls Obama an &#039;a&amp;mdash;hole&#039;

(Image credit: CC by: U.S. Embassy, Jakarta)

last updated 8 January 2015

Friends of George Clooney, take note: Your pal has your back.

In Las Vegas earlier this month, Clooney defended President Obama after casino mogul Steve Wynn called him an "asshole." During a dinner at the swanky Botero restaurant inside of Wynn's Encore hotel, reports Las Vegas Review-Journal columnist Norm Clarke, the topic of conversation turned to the Affordable Care Act. That's when Wynn called Obama the A-word.

"There were nine people at that table... so you can ask them.... Steve likes to go on rants.... He called the president an asshole.... That is a fact," Clooney said in a statement released to The Hollywood Reporter by his publicist. "I said that the president was my longtime friend and then he said 'your friend is an asshole'.... At that point, I told Steve that he was an asshole and that I wasn't going to sit as his table while he was being a jackass, and I walked out.... Those are all the facts. It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with character."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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