So here’s the story: A few weeks ago, George Clooney and Las Vegas business hobgoblin Steve Wynn got into an alcohol-fueled argument during a group dinner at Wynn’s restaurant in the Encore, when Clooney was in town to promote his Casamigos tequila during a wine and spirits convention. It happens, you know — sometimes men with large, yet sensitive-as-a-delicate-flower egos just can’t get along on the playground and somebody has to take their ball and go home.
What makes this story particularly unusual, however, is that now it’s being turned into an inflated public feud with each side releasing “statements” about the ugliness to the media. Both Clooney and Wynn reached out to the Las Vegas Review-Journal with their separate accounts of what went down, because, sure! Why not.
First up is Clooney, in an email sent through his publicist:
“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 … I said 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 I wasn’t going to sit at his table while he was being such a jackass.
“And I walked out. There were obviously quite a few more adjectives and adverbs used by both of us. Those are all the facts. It had nothing to do with politics and everything to do with character.”
Because you don’t dare insult the President of the United States of George Clooney’s Personal BFF.
Next up is Wynn, who claims that Clooney was tequila shot wasted:
Clooney took exception, Wynn said, when one of the CAA execs told a joke about former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev. “He stood up and threw a hissy fit” at the CAA guy, Wynn said in a telephone interview, his first comments on the dust-up.
“Then he sat down and started talking about the Affordable Care Act, and that’s when I spoke up,” said Wynn, a frequent critic of Obamacare. “He didn’t like that either. I think my discussion about the Affordable Care Act was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“When he’s drinking, he considers himself a close personal buddy of the president. He got up and said, ‘I don’t have to listen to this (expletive) stuff. The only person who got excited at the table was George, and he ran off to another bar.”
Clooney’s partners were “mortified,” Wynn said. “Clooney’s fun to be with when he’s sober,” Wynn added. “If you have a chance to drink with him, you want to get there early, and don’t stay late.
“Everybody who’s in my business, the casino business, knows to take actors with a grain of salt.”
Meanwhile, George Clooney’s Casamigos tequila business partner Rande Gerber, who was also present at the dinner, has gone running off to TMZ with his account of the fight:
Wynn claims things exploded because Clooney was slamming tequila — but Rande Gerber, who was at the dinner — insists, “No shots were had” … and it was NOT a heated political debate.
Gerber says, “This wasn’t about politics. It was about George standing up for a friend.”
My takeaway here? Wynn intentionally made a barbed comment about the president knowing that it would make Clooney lose his sh*t, George Clooney played right into Wynn’s trap and then both of them did some creative embellishing. In other words, welcome to the world of grown ass men with dicks.