Robert DeNiro. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Dear Commons Community,
Over the weekend, one CNN commentator echoed actor Robert De Niro’s line that President Biden “on a gurney” is still better than another four years of Trump in the Oval Office.
In December 2023, when asked in a Rolling Stone interview if Biden is the “right guy” to take on Trump, De Niro answered, “I think that if Biden was on a gurney and couldn’t move anything but his eyes to blink ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ he’s our person. There’s no way that he’s not the guy to take Trump down.”
In a call to action, De Niro says he hopes everybody gets out to vote.
Sitting down with the Rolling Stone, De Niro, 80, covered a wide range of topics from politics, to the actor’s strike to welcoming his seventh child and losing his 19-year-old grandson to a drug overdose.
“It’s a lot,” he told Rolling Stones while choking up. “I have no choice but to plow through. And my biggest concern now, with everything else, is us getting out of this situation with a monster in Trump. This is a classic grift. This is unreal.”
“If you look at other totalitarian countries like Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, it will affect everybody in ways you can’t even imagine,” De Niro added.
The actor said he did not think Trump was a “monster” when he was first elected, but his thoughts have since shifted towards the former president.
“I thought, ‘Maybe he’ll straighten out.’ Now, this guy is beyond dangerous and I just hope people can realize it,” he said. “Once you go down that road, it won’t be easy to come back.”
In December, Trump railed against De Niro after the actor criticized the former president in a speech last month at the Gotham Awards. Trump responded, arguing De Niro “should focus on his life, which is a mess, rather than the lives of others.”
Asked about Trump’s response to the speech, De Niro said, “The problem is people respond to him. God forbid he did become president — this is a road where, if we go down it, it will be very hard to turn around.”
De Niro even quoted former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a staunch critic of Trump, telling Rolling Stone, “As Liz Cheney said, ‘He will not leave,’” and later called the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s alleged efforts to stay in power “unbelievable.”
De Niro has been a vocal critic of Trump in recent years and recently has upped his warning against another White House term for Trump, saying, “Democracy won’t survive the return of a wannabe dictator.”
In a statement in October, De Niro said he spent a lot of time studying criminals, saying, “I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump,” adding, “When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.”
Evil indeed!
Tony
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