Robert De Niro is not holding back. The actor referred to President Donald Trump as racist, a white supremacist and a series of other names during his interview with The Guardian.
“I’m older now and I’m just upset about what’s going on,” De Niro, 75, explained in the story published on Sunday, January 6. “When you see someone like [Trump] becoming president, I thought, Well, OK, let’s see what he does – maybe he’ll change.’ But he just got worse. It showed me that he is a real racist. I thought maybe as a New Yorker he understands the diversity in the city but he’s as bad as I thought he was before – and much worse. It’s a shame. It’s a bad thing in this country.”
Trump, 72, has made headlines throughout his presidency for controversial comments, including allegedly using the N-word on the set of The Apprentice before he was elected. During a White House news conference in November 2018, he claimed that he doesn’t “use racist remarks.”
De Niro, who is the father of six mixed-race children, told The Guardian that he worries about how people of different backgrounds are treated under Trump’s presidency. “And one of my kids is gay, and he worries about being treated a certain way,” he explained. “We talk about it.”
When asked by the outlet if he believes Trump is a white supremacist, De Niro “instantly” replied “yes,” according to The Guardian.
“I guess that’s what it leads to,” the two-time Oscar winner continued when asked if Trump is also a fascist. “If he had his way, we’d wind up in a very bad state in this country. I mean, the way I understand it, they laughed at Hitler. They all look funny. Hitler looked funny, Mussolini looked funny, other dictators and despots look funny.”
De Niro aded: “He’s a con artist. He’s a huckster. He’s a scam artist. And what bothers me is that people don’t see that. I think that The Apprentice had a lot to do with that, which I never saw but once, maybe. It’s all smoke and mirrors, it’s all bulls—t.”
This is not the first time that De Niro has railed against Trump. Back in October 2016, the actor, who portrays Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live, said he wanted to “punch” Trump in the face.
