Robert De Niro is making it clear once again that he won’t touch former US president Donald Trump with a 10-foot pole.
The two-time Oscar winner gave his two cents on the “monster” GOP front-runner in an interview shared by Rolling Stone on Wednesday.
“Now, this guy is beyond dangerous, and I just hope people can realise it. Once you go down that road, it won’t be easy to come back,” said the Taxi Driver actor, who noted that he initially thought Trump might “straighten out” when he was elected president.
De Niro, who has ripped the former president on a number of occasions, later broke down why he’d take Joe Biden over Trump.
“I think that if Biden was on a gurney and couldn’t move anything but his eyes to blink ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ he’s our person,” he said. “There’s no way that he’s not the guy to take Trump down. Nikki Haley, maybe?
“We need anything to get rid of Trump. If she came in it could at least throw him off and have her be the nominee. But Biden is the best person at this point.”
The actor’s comments come less than a month after his fiery remarks at the Gotham Awards, where he took aim at the former president while introducing an award on behalf of Killers Of The Flower Moon.
De Niro noted that lines from his speech had been “cut out” from the teleprompter at the time, and the viral moment sparked a response from Trump, who called him “unwatchable both in movies, and with the FOOLS that destroyed the Academy Awards”.
He told Rolling Stone that the speech had been tweaked after he had worked on it with writer Lewis Friedman, adding that a consultant had “put something in the speech” about concerns over teaching the book Killers Of The Flower Moon in Oklahoma.
“And then I didn’t hear anything. They gave me the script, and I looked at the prompter, and I asked after, ‘What happened?’ They assumed that I had spoken to Marty or somebody about it, but I hadn’t,” said De Niro, who later referred to Killers Of The Flower Moon director Martin Scorsese.
“They assumed that I would be OK with it, and maybe I’m still getting it wrong, and I wasn’t. Marty and I spoke about it the next day and he said, ‘Yeah, I had sent you a text and [Apple] asked if you could dial it down, respectfully.’”
Scorsese, in a statement to several outlets on the De Niro speech, said: “The Gotham Awards honoured the filmmakers and cast with The Historical Icon & Creator tribute, which recognises significant moments in history and for bringing a story to life in an authentic way on screen.
“We all wanted to make sure that in the limited time available, the acceptance speech had space to acknowledge our Osage collaborators on-stage and at home, as well as our entire cast and filmmaking team.”
He added: “Apple has been a tremendous partner and there was no censorship. There was an unfortunate miscommunication regarding the final version of the speech.
“The event was a beautiful moment for our cast and collaborators to be reunited for the first time since the strikes. It was an incredible honour to receive this recognition.”