Robert De Niro teared up and choked up when he passionately discussed Donald Trump on a podcast.
The progressive actor — a frequent and longtime critic of the president — appeared on Nicolle Wallace’s MS NOW podcast, The Best People, on Monday, where he tore into Trump and urged people to protest his actions.
“Trump is the enemy of this country, let’s not kid ourselves,” De Niro said. “It’s that simple. Everybody has to stick together to get them out and get back on track. We can all argue and fight about our little differences and all that. This is the big problem.”
When asked if he thought Trump would step down at the end of his second term, De Niro replied, “No way.”
“He won’t leave,” De Niro said firmly. “Let’s not kid ourselves. He. Will. Not. Leave. It’s up to us to get rid of him. We have to make sure … We’ve got to get rid of him. He’s going to ruin the country. People have to mobilize now and be ready for the midterms.”
In addition, De Niro made the case for people peacefully protesting and uniting against Trump in every legal way possible.
“Everybody has to get out there every way possible,” De Niro said. “This is our country. You know, I want my country back. I don’t want everybody going around with their MAGA flags and American flags like they’re the only ones [who are patriotic]. We are Americans, too. And there are more of us because we believe in what’s right and wrong; empathy, and kindness. Bringing the country together, not dispersing it … I understand tribalism — you stick with your own and all that. But this is way, way, way more serious.”
In fact, even if Trump dies, De Niro is concerned that the movement he’s created won’t go away.
Even if Trump dies for some reason — by having an illness or something — parts of that movement are still there, and that’s the scary part,” he said. “It has to be neutralized by the people who say, ‘Wait a minute, our rights are being trampled on.’ We have to stand up. Period.’”
During the most emotional part of the interview, Wallace played a clip of De Niro’s 1981 Oscars acceptance speech for best actor and asked him about why he’s always been driven to “lift up everybody around you.”
“You have to lift people up,” the 82-year-old Goodfellas actor said, his voice cracking and eyes watering. “You have to bring them together, period. You can’t divide people. You can’t win that way. It’s a no-win situation. It’s almost like our destiny to have this thing there attempting to destroy this country, and maybe not even understanding why. So it’s up to us to protect the country that we love.”
Trump has slammed De Niro repeatedly in turn, including today, when he urged the actor to leave the country on Truth Social, writing, “[Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashia Tlaib of Michigan] should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ, who has absolutely no idea what he is doing or saying — some of which is seriously CRIMINAL.”
If you’re interested in De Niro’s comments, it’s worth watching the whole 40-minute video rather than just reading the cherry-picked quotes above because this is a very earnest, deep-dive conversation that gets into a lot of detail about the actor’s feelings on this issue.
