The United States has become a country governed by its least qualified people, actor and prominent Democratic activist George Clooney told reporters at the Venice Film Festival on September 2, 2026 — and he offered U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s mockery of a Canadian cadet instructor as his proof.
Clooney, 65, was in Venice, Italy, where he received the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement at the opening ceremony of the 83rd Venice International Film Festival that same evening. Asked at a festival press conference to assess the state of his country, he said he remains an optimist but described the present moment as an unfortunate one — then said even that was an understatement.
The Word Clooney Reached For
“There’s a great word, kakistocracy, which is a country run by the least qualified people,” Clooney said. “I think maybe we have a kakistocracy right now, but we’ll get through it, and we will have an election in November that should be a check and balance, and then in 2028, with any luck, we’ll have some restoration into some normalcy.”
The country has survived worse, he argued. “I’m old enough to have been through 1968 in the States when every city in the United States was set on fire, and we lost Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the same year,” he said. “There was tons of violence. The capital was surrounded with tanks.” Clooney, born in May 1961, was six when the King assassination set off the Washington riots that April. President Lyndon Johnson sent 11,850 federal troops into the city alongside 1,750 D.C. National Guardsmen, and Marines mounted machine guns on the Capitol steps; contemporary accounts do not record tanks.
From there he moved to what he called an embrace of cruelty in public life. “You see what the secretary of defense just tweeted out a picture about women in the military in Canada, and you’re going, ‘What’s wrong with you? Where’s the sense of decency in all of this?’” he said. “And I’m ashamed of all of that, but we will get through it, and we will come out better on the other side.”
The Post That Set Off Canada
Clooney was pointing to a post Hegseth put on X on the night of Monday, August 31. The defense secretary had shared a screengrab from the social media page of the Vernon Cadet Training Centre in Vernon, B.C., showing an officer of the Cadet Instructors Cadre presenting a medal to a young cadet at the end of a summer session. His caption, in full, was a Canadian flag emoji followed by “(this is real).” Readers took it as a jab at the adult instructor’s weight, and that is what set the reaction off. Mediaite counted more than 4.2 million views by the following morning; within days the figure had passed 10 million.
Hegseth posted as President Donald Trump’s trade war with Ottawa dragged on and as he continued to oversee a shakeup of the Pentagon’s senior ranks. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll resigned that same day, after widely reported tensions with Hegseth.
Canadian Leaders Hit Back
Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary Jacob Bliss, asked about the uproar on Tuesday, said, “The X post speaks for itself.” Prime Minister Mark Carney, talking to reporters in Ottawa the same day, said such comments were beneath the offices those officials hold. “When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade, stop trying to be tough and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions,” he said. Defence Minister David McGuinty called the post “below the dignity of the office.”
B.C. Premier David Eby went further, calling the post and the Pentagon’s defense of it alike an embarrassment. “It tells you everything you need to know about the amateur-hour, distracted, bizarre leadership that Americans are being subjected to,” Eby told reporters.
Criticism came from across party lines. Conservative Member of Parliament Garnett Genuis, replying to Hegseth on Monday, noted that cadets do valuable work and are not members of the military. “158 members of the Canadian military gave their lives in Afghanistan after your country was attacked,” he wrote. “Canada and the U.S. have a great history of fighting together for freedom and justice. It’s history worth remembering.”
The Army Cadet League of Canada said that “directing derogatory commentary toward youth who are actively working to better themselves and serve their communities is unacceptable,” and that it stands behind cadets, adult staff, volunteers and officers alike. Youth aged 12 to 18 may join the federal program, which the Canadian government describes as a way for young people to build the knowledge and confidence that carry them into adulthood.
No Retreat From the Pentagon
Hegseth has not apologized, deleted the post or answered the criticism directly. On Saturday, September 5, days after Carney’s warning, he quote-posted a Canadian Coast Guard message marking Pride and added nothing but the same Canadian flag emoji.
Clooney turned to more personal ground the day after the press conference, at a master class on the Lido where he spoke about his older sister, Adelia “Ada” Zeidler, who died of cancer last year at 65. “My sister, who I was very close to, got cancer last year and she died very quickly,” he said. “I was with her when she died, and there was this feeling, being with her, holding her hand when she died, understanding how brief all of this is.” Time goes fast, he said, and so people have to find nothing but joy.
Clooney has long mixed movie stardom with Democratic politics, and the Hegseth episode fit a broader pattern he sees taking hold in Washington. He finished his answer in Venice on a hopeful note, insisting that this chapter in American life will pass — a message aimed as much at the international press in front of him as at the audience back home.