Hollywood legend Robert De Niro said on Friday he would “never” portray former President Donald Trump as an actor as he issued a warning about the upcoming election.
The Oscar-winner talked about his red line in filming during an appearance on HBO’s latest episode of “Real Time” with host Bill Maher, who, like De Niro, is a vocal Trump critic.
“He’s such a mean, nasty, hateful person,” De Niro said of Trump. “I’d never play him as an actor, because I can’t see any good in him. Nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing redeemable in him.”
Robert de Niro: Trump “is a total monster” and “if he wins the election, you won’t be on this show anymore, he’ll come looking for me…That’s what happens in that kind of a dictatorship.” He’s “sociopathic, psychopathic, malignant narcissist,” an “idiot” and “a clown.” #RealTime pic.twitter.com/RFN2XqWQxi
— Brent Baker 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) March 9, 2024
De Niro went on to make drastic predictions about what could happen to himself and Maher if Trump ends up winning a second term in the White House.
“If he wins the election, you won’t be on the show anymore,” De Niro said. “He’ll come looking for me. There’ll be things that happen that none of us can imagine. That’s what happens in that kind of a dictatorship, which is what he says.”
De Niro appeared to be referencing Trump’s pledge last year to be a “dictator” only on the first day of a second term in order to tackle issues such as border security and drilling for energy.
President Joe Biden has argued that U.S. democracy is at stake in the 2024 election. Both he and Trump are running for a second term, paving the way for what could be a 2020 rematch.
“Donald Trump poses many threats to the country, from the right to choose to civil rights to voting rights to America’s standing in the world. But the greatest threat Trump poses is to our democracy, because if we lose that, we lose everything,” Biden said in remarks last December.
Trump claimed that Biden had it backward.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP
Biden is the “real threat to democracy for two simple reasons: he’s corrupt and incompetent — grossly incompetent,” Trump said.
De Niro told Maher on Friday that he did not know why Trump is performing so well against Biden in polls, including among women and Latinos.
“I just don’t want to feel the way I did, and many of us don’t, after the election in 2016 where we couldn’t believe that it happened. The guy is a total monster,” he added.