After his years-long litany of protestations against Donald Trump, Oscar-winner Robert De Niro tried to be more measured, but even more urgent, in his criticism of the former president this week. In an interview with Stephanie Ruhle on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, the actor said, “I’m tired of calling him names…He is really, genuinely a sick person.”
Asked by Ruhle if he would ever play Trump onscreen, De Niro nearly cut off the question he was so quick to answer, “Never. There’s nothing about him — there’s not one redeeming thing in him that I can see.” (Note that De Niro did agree to play William Hale in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, whom he called “a sociopath.” Trump, it seems, is beyond the pale.)
To those who would hold their noses and vote for Trump despite obvious failings, the actor said, “I don’t think they understand how dangerous it will be if he ever, God forbid, becomes president [again]. I don’t think they really understand. And, historically, from what I see, in Nazi Germany they had it with Hitler. They don’t take him seriously. Looks like a clown. Acts like a clown. Mussolini, same thing. These guys, I don’t know why, they look like clowns. Somehow people, that element of society, identifies with them.”
In terms of what a second Trump term would mean, De Niro said, “It would be chaos beyond our imagination. There’s no mystery about him. He’s right out front, and what he says is what it’ll be if he becomes president.”
Asked if he thought American democracy was at risk, the Oscar-winner said his concern was even more basic.
“It’s about right and wrong. Period. The guy’s a monster. It’s beyond wrong. It’s almost like he wants to do the most horrible things that he can think of in order to get…a rise out of us? I don’t know what it is, but it’s f*cking acary.”
But “scary” is not enough to stop the admittedly angry 80-year-old.
“The idea to be bullied at my age by someone like this, [it] is not happening…I think other people are going to have to stand up because it’s either that, or you’re going to find yourself in a world that’s so terrifying…We always hear about people from Eastern Europe, the Jews from other parts of Eastern Europe, Western Europe, coming over. Look what happened in France, the Nazis and so on. When I was a kid I’d say, ‘Hitler, it’s a nightmare. It never would happen [here].’ But now I see that it’s possible.”
So will he vote for Biden?
“We don’t have a choice,” replied De Niro. “He’s a good guy. He’s trying to do the right thing.”
Asked for his advice to Biden in the campaign, “Go at him. People take notice when you do that,” De Niro counseled. “Figuratively, punch him in the face. Go at him. A bully you punch in the face. Trouble with Trump is he’s not just a bully, he’s a stupid bully.”