As expected, Donald Trump has fired back at actor Robert De Niro for comments he made during a recent appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher. Taking to Truth Social, the embattled politician wrote, “Robert De Niro has a terminal case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Such a stupid sounding guy, a low IQ individual!”
De Niro chatted with Maher on Friday (March 8) ahead of the Oscars, where he’s nominated for his work on Killers of the Flower Moon. During their conversation, De Niro didn’t mince words, saying, “He’s such a mean, nasty, hateful person. 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.”
The actor, noting that the November election will likely be a rematch of Trump versus Biden, insisted a repeat Trump presidency would be a “nightmare,” while a vote for Biden would return America “to normalcy.”
He added, “I just don’t want to feel the way I did. And many of us don’t,” he said, referring to Trump’s surprise victory in 2016. “It can’t be. It cannot be. If he wins the election, you won’t be on this show anymore. He’ll come looking for me. [There will] 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 [he wants]. Let’s believe him. Take him at his word.”
Of course, many people applauded De Niro’s uncensored opinion on Trump, including former Tommy Boy Records A&R Dante Ross. Shortly after the episode aired, he took to Instagram to support De Niro’s viewpoint. He wrote in the caption, “Robert Deniro one of the greatest actors of our time, talking about Don the Con, telling it like it is. He pulls zero punches. Wait to the end, Bobby D gets extra spicy with it. NYC loves you Mr. Deniro, you rep our city correctly, the other guy not so much. Thank your for your service.”
As for De Niro, he’s famously been anti-Trump for years. In 2016, he admitted he’d like to “punch him in the face.” Watch the clip below.