Today is Robert De Niro’s birthday. The Oscar-winning actor is 75 years old. While normally a day like today would be a perfect opportunity to revisit and celebrate an impressive filmography — the actor has been so aggressive with his political views in recent years that it’s really all people can think of when his name is uttered.
His tirades have been so out of control that fellow filmmakers like Rob Reiner, a staunch anti-Trumper, and Jon Voight, a Trump supporter and De Niro’s co-star in the classic “Heat,” have called him out on it.
Even President Donald Trump took notice and suggested on Twitter that the “Raging Bull” star had taken too many shots to the head in the past.
Here is a look at De Niro’s zaniest Trump-related comments.
1.) “I’d like to punch him in the face.” In what was supposed to be a nonpartisan video encouraging people to vote in the 2016 presidential election, De Niro devolved into schoolyard bully insults for almost a full minute.
He said he’d like to assault Trump, then called the former real estate mogul a “mutt,” “a bozo” and “an embarrassment” to the country. It was clear then that the actor’s beef with the future president was about far more than politics.
It was in some way personal.
2.) “I don’t care what he likes. If he walked into a restaurant I was in — I’d walk out.” De Niro made this comment while promoting a restaurant he was helping to open in Spain. The establishment serves Japanese-inspired cuisine, and De Niro made clear he would “never let Trump into any of the Nobu restaurants.”
Chef Nobu Matsuhisa, who co-founded the venture, was a little more reasonable. “It’s my dream for Trump to sit next to Bob. To make them sushi!” he said.
3.) “Our country is led by a president who believes he can make up his own truth. And we have a word for that — bull****.” De Niro said this at a function that really didn’t call for politics to be addressed. It was during a speech to high school students at a New York awards ceremony for recipients of the Rosemary Breslin American Writer Award.
Another nugget from De Niro was: “So what about the truth? What does the truth even mean today? I mean, if you’re Donald Trump, it doesn’t mean anything. If you’re cowardly Republican enablers in Congress, you don’t let the truth stand in the way of pathetically clinging to power.”
4.) “I hope there’s a couple [of segments] where I interrogate [Trump], I arrest him, and then I take him to jail.” De Niro said this to NBC’s Craig Melvin after he played Robert Mueller on the leftist show “Saturday Night Live.”
How sad that the man who once gave groundbreaking performances in films like “Taxi Driver,” “Goodfellas,” “Raging Bull,” and more is now content to simply play out strange political fantasies.
Maybe “Meet the Parents” counted as fair warning…
Watch De Niro’s original crazy Trump rant below:
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