Actor and prominent Democratic activist George Clooney reached past the usual political vocabulary on Wednesday, telling reporters at the Venice Film Festival that the United States has become a country run by its least qualified people — and pointing to U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mockery of Canadian military cadets as his evidence.
The 65-year-old star, in Venice, Italy, to collect the Golden Lion lifetime achievement award, was asked at a festival press conference how he viewed the current state of his country. He said he remains an optimist, but called the present moment an unfortunate one — before adding that the description was an understatement.
Clooney Reaches for an Unfamiliar Word
“There’s a great word, kakistocracy, which is a country run by the least qualified people,” Clooney said, adding that he believes the United States is living under one right now but will get through it.
He argued the country has weathered worse, saying he is old enough to remember 1968, when American cities burned, violence was widespread, tanks ringed the Capitol and the nation lost Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the same year. Those were difficult times too, he said, and so is this one.
Clooney also offered a political forecast, predicting that the November 2026 midterm elections should function as a check and balance, and expressing hope that the 2028 presidential race would put things back on a more normal footing.
Then he turned to what he described as an embrace of cruelty in public life — the notion, as he put it, that being unkind is part of the fun. Watching the defense secretary post a picture of women in Canada’s military, he said, prompted him to ask what was wrong with the person behind it and where the sense of decency had gone. He said he is ashamed of it, but expects the country to emerge better on the other side.
The Post That Angered Canada
Clooney was referring to a post Hegseth published on X on Monday night, dated September 1, 2026, in which the defense secretary shared an image from the Vernon Cadet Training Centre in Vernon, B.C. The photo shows a female Canadian cadet smiling as an instructor pins a medal on her. Hegseth’s caption — a parenthetical insistence that the picture was genuine — ran alongside a Canadian flag emoji.
The jab came as President Donald Trump’s trade war with Ottawa dragged on, and while Hegseth continued to oversee a shakeup of the Pentagon’s senior ranks. It landed the same day his Army secretary departed the post.
In Canada, the response was swift and furious. Some critics argued that the U.S. defense secretary had gone after a youth program in order to belittle the Canadian Armed Forces. Others said he had body-shamed women taking part in the cadet program.
Canadian Leaders Push Back
Asked about the uproar on Tuesday, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Jacob Bliss said the post spoke for itself. The same day, Prime Minister Mark Carney told reporters in Ottawa that comments from Trump administration officials maligning Canada’s military fell beneath the offices those officials hold.
B.C. Premier David Eby went further, calling both the post and the Pentagon’s defense of it an embarrassment. “It tells you everything you need to know about the amateur-hour, distracted, bizarre leadership that Americans are being subjected to,” Eby said.
The criticism crossed party lines. Conservative Member of Parliament Garnett Genuis replied to Hegseth on Monday, noting that cadets do valuable work and are not members of the military, and reminding the secretary that 158 members of the Canadian military died in Afghanistan after the United States was attacked. Genuis said the two countries share a long history of fighting together for freedom and justice, and called it a history worth remembering.
The Army Cadet League of Canada spoke out against the wave of online abuse and ridicule aimed at cadets and what they have earned, saying it is unacceptable to direct derogatory commentary at young people who are working to better themselves and serve their communities. The league said it stands behind the cadets, adult staff, volunteers and officers who help develop the next generation of Canadian leaders. The federal program is open to youth aged 12 to 18, and the Canadian government describes it as a way for young people to build the knowledge and confidence that carry them into adulthood.
For Clooney, who has long mixed movie stardom with Democratic politics, the episode fit a broader pattern he sees taking hold in Washington. He closed his answer in Venice on a hopeful note, insisting that the current chapter in American life will pass — a message directed as much at the international press in front of him as at the audience back home.
