Robert De Niro blasts Trump supporters outside hush-money trial

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Two-time Oscar-winning actor Robert De Niro sparred with Donald Trump supporters outside the New York City courtroom hearing arguments in the former president’s historic hush money trial.

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De Niro was invited to speak by President Joe Biden just steps from the Manhattan courtroom where Trump is being tried over claims he allegedly plotted to buy the silence of people with stories that might have harmed his 2016 presidential bid.

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“The Twin Towers fell just over here, just over there. This part of the city was like a ghost town, but we vowed we would not allow terrorists to change our way of life. … I love this city. I don’t want to destroy it. Donald Trump wants to destroy not only the city, but the country, and eventually he can destroy the world,” De Niro said as he was joined by two officers who defended the Capitol from the Jan. 6 mob in 2021.

“I don’t mean to scare you. No, no, wait — maybe I do mean to scare you,” De Niro continued. “If Trump returns to the White House, you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections — forget about it. That’s over, that’s done.”

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De Niro warned that if Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for this year’s U.S. election, wins “he will never leave.”

“If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave,” De Niro seethed. “What does that mean? Is that the country we want to live in? Do we want him running this country and saying I’m not leaving? I’m dictator for life.”

As a horn blared in the background, De Niro called Trump a “loser” and said he hoped Biden’s new ad campaign “reaches outside the bubble to remind supporters of what a danger (Trump) is to our lives.”

“This is not a threat,” De Niro continued. “This is a reality. That’s why I have joined the Biden-Harris campaign because the only way to preserve our freedoms and hold on to our humanity is to vote for Joe Biden for president. Really,” he shrugged. “We don’t have a choice.”

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In footage shared on X, De Niro said Trump “doesn’t belong in my city.”

“I don’t know where he belongs, but he certainly doesn’t belong here,” De Niro said. “We New Yorkers used to tolerate him when he was just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot. A two-bit playboy lying his way into the tabloids. Pretending to be a spokesperson for himself. He was calling for himself, as himself, to fool the press into inflating his net worth. A clown. But this city is pretty accommodating. We make room for clowns. We have them all over the city, people who do crazy things … we tolerate it. It’s part of the culture. But (from) not a person like Trump who will eventually run the country. That does not work, and we all know that.”

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But after his speech ended, De Niro got into a war of words with pro-Trump protesters, who called him a “punk” and said his “movies suck.”

“You’re not going to intimidate,” De Niro fired back. “That’s what Trump does. … We are going to fight back. We’re trying to be gentlemen in this world, the Democrats. You are gangsters. You are gangsters!”

“You’re washed up,” a protester yelled.

“F— you,” De Niro fired back.

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De Niro has been a vocal critic of Trump, calling him “a gangster” and accusing him of lying “more than 30,000 times.”

In response, Trump has said De Niro’s films are “unwatchable,” and advised the actor to “focus on his life, which is a mess, rather than the lives of others. He has become a total loser, as the World watches, waits, and laughs!”

“Robert De Niro is a ‘mental midget’ whose mind is shot, and whose life is a total train wreck. Very much like Crooked Joe Biden, he can’t put two sentences together. The good news is that this crude and very stupid ‘animal’ has lost all credibility!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social media platform last December.

Trump’s hush money trial, where he faces 34 counts of falsifying business records, is nearing an end in Manhattan. He is accused of falsifying business records to conceal a US$130,000 payment to former porn star Stormy Daniels in the leadup to the 2016 election to stop her claims they had an affair a decade prior from being revealed.

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