De Niro takes veiled jab at Trump at SAG tribute

Robert De Niro, an American actor, producer, and director, has once again taken a veiled jab at US President Donald Trump.

The two time academy award winner attacked Trump on Sunday during a ceremony where he was presented with a lifetime achievement award for 50 years of acting.

After receiving a standing ovation upon walking on stage for his acceptance speech, De Niro used the opportunity to, yet again, take another swipe at Trump, without mentioning him by name.

"Political leaders who support unions are more likely to support Affordable Care Act, equitable taxes, humane immigration regulations, a safe environment, a diverse citizenry, reproductive rights, sensible gun control and fair wages and benefits. We owe them our support and we owe them our vote," he said. 

He also said the US is in a "dire situation" and then accused Trump of blatantly abusing his power as the president.

"I can imagine some of you are saying, all right, all right, let's not get into the politics and all that. But we're in such a dire situation that's so deeply concerning to me and to so many others, I have to say something. And I thought I said it pretty well to Variety the other day, so I'm going to quote myself. There's right and there's wrong and there's common sense and there's abuse of power. And as a citizen, I have as much right as anybody -- an actor, an athlete, a musician, anybody else -- to voice my opinion? And if I have a bigger voice because of my situation, I'm going to use it whenever I see a blatant abuse of power."

This comes at a time when Trump is being charged of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress during only the third ever impeachment of a US President.

De Niro has a history of Trump driven outbursts and expletives. A few months before the election in 2016, he famously described the then presidential candidate and his campaign as “really totally crazy, ridiculous."

“I don’t know, it’s crazy that people like Donald Trump. He shouldn’t even be where he is, so God help us.”

And that was before he ever became president. When he did become president, De Niro, trying to be optimistic, said in an interview: “He’s president now … half the country is horrified, many parts of the world are, and we’re gonna see how he does. That’s it. I give the benefit of the doubt that’s he going to try his best to do the right thing.”

In May of 2017, at a benefit in New York, De Niro came out in criticism of Trump's harsh immigration policies, saying it would prevent future artists, like Charlie Chaplin, from entering the country.

“The administration’s mean-spiritedness towards our art and entertainment is an expression of their mean-spirited attitude about people who want that art and entertainment, people who also want and deserve decent wages, a fair tax system, a safe environment, education for their children and healthcare for all,” he said.

In June 2018, at the Tony awards, he received another thunderous round of applause for his most famous Trump commentary of all time where he declared: “It’s no longer down with Trump. It’s f*** Trump.”  

When Trump recently called his own longtime lawyer Michael Cohen a “rat”, which is mobster slang for “snitch” or informant, De Niro said of the president: “He makes mobsters look bad because there are mobsters who will shake your hand and keep their word. He can’t even do that.”

He previously said he was worried that Trump will start another war just so he can serve a third term since the only other president who served a third term was Roosevelt because he was in a war.

“I’m worried because if he gets re-elected, it’s gonna be very, very bad—very bad on a lot of levels. We already have a lot of reparations, if you will—repairs—to do to the damage that he’s already done, and he has to be gotten out,” De Niro told The Daily Beast. “He’s going to be history at one point, though he’d love to be president for life. He jokes about it. I think that if he became president for a second term, he’d try to have a third term, and let smarter people manipulate it into getting us into some kind of altercation: a war.”

He made that eerie prediction of the recent crisis between Iran and the USA, which nearly spiraled dangerously toward an all out war back in Nov. He also said it wouldn’t surprise him if Trump started a war to keep himself in office for a third term. 

“Trump joked about being ‘president for life’ with [Chinese President Xi Jinping] and so on. He’ll pardon anybody, he’ll do anything. The day after he was elected, I went on a TV show and said I’d give him the benefit of the doubt and say that I hope he won’t be as bad as I think he will be, but he’s turned out to be a lot worse.”

Whether Trump is removed from office as a result of the ongoing impeachment or sails through the proceedings and manages to be reelected, or not, remains to be seen.

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