The Media Research Center’s rampant hypocrisy on celebrities opining on political matters — it’s bad when they’re liberals, but it’s cool when they say right-wing-friendly things — surfaced when a prominent actor engaged in its version of wrongthink. Alex Christy kicked off the complaining in a March 12 post:
Prior to Sunday’s Oscars, actor Robert De Niro traveled over to HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher to warn that if Trump wins in November, then Trump will “come looking for me.” Later, on Monday’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! on ABC, De Niro claimed Trump is simultaneously “so [bleep] stupid” and a “[bleep] moron.”
Maher led De Niro with a somber question, “Why is Trump winning? I mean, the poll, the New York Times poll this week, came out, and maybe this will change with the State of the Union Address, but Trump was beating him rather soundly, it was quite a warning light, 48 to 43, also winning way more among women, women, than he had before, winning outright Latinos, what do you attribute that to?”
Despite trying to portray himself as a tough guy, De Niro could only sheepishly answer, “I don’t know, 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.”
He then tried to get into the head of a Trump supporter, “The guy is a total monster and anybody — I don’t understand it. I guess they get behind the kind of logic, they want to fuck with people, screw them because they’re unhappy about something. 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.”
Rather than offer any sort of rebuttal to de Niro’s remarks, Christy merely huffed: “The late night shows aren’t necessarily places to go for a good laugh, rather they are method of escapism for liberals who want other liberals to make them feel better.”
Christy complained about more remarks from de Niro in a May 3 post:
For some reason, MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle decided to interview actor Robert De Niro on the Thursday edition of The 11th Hour. On multiple occasions, De Niro would compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler and himself and his compatriots to Jews in Nazi Germany, claiming “it’s [bleep] scary.”
Ruhle wondered, “What do you say to those who say, ‘I don’t like the guy, but I’m going to vote for him.’ What’s your message to them?” De Niro claimed that “I don’t understand it. I don’t think they understand how dangerous it will be if he ever, God forbid, becomes president.”
He further claimed, “I don’t think they really understand and historically, from what I see, even in Nazi Germany, they had it with Hitler. They don’t take him seriously. He looks like a clown, acts like a clown, Mussolini, same thing. These guys, I don’t know why they look like clowns, they somehow, people, that element of society identifies in some ways with them, but it would be chaos beyond our imagination. There’s no mystery about him. He’s right out front and what he says is what it will be if he becomes president.”
This time, Christy played whataboutism rather then substantively rebut anything de Niro said: “Of all the times to compare being a liberal in Trump’s America to being a Jew in Nazi Germany, the one that involves Jews being told by hard core leftists to go back to Poland is probably not the best one.” Christy offered no evidence that the people he claims were saying that — as quoted in a post by Nicholas Fondacaro — are “hard core leftists.”
Speaking of Fondacaro, it was his turn to melt down over more de Niro comments in a May 14 post:
Between co-host Sunny Hostin saying there were too many white people in Trump’s courtroom and George Stephanopoulos praising the Deep State, the Tuesday edition of ABC’s The View was already stacked with outrageous moments before Trump-hater and actor, Robert De Niro took the stage late in the show. The bitter aging actor went on an unhinged and profanity-filled tirade against the former President and asserted that he was “already” like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini.
“I don’t understand why people are not taking him seriously [as a threat],” De Niro decried, “because you read about it historically in other countries that they didn’t take the people seriously. Think of Hitler and Mussolini. They were fools and clowns. Well — and I hear — some people — I mean, who does not think that this guy is going to do exactly what he says he’s going to do? He’s done it already.”
De Niro predicted that, if Trump got elected again, at some point he and other people against Trump would be able to say, “We told you so.” He then lashed out at Trump’s supporters with a deluge of profanity that caused executive producer Brian Teta to mute the entire show, not just De Niro:
[…]As they were nearing the end of the segment, moderator Whoopi Goldberg chimed in to claim – without evidence – that Trump planned to take over the country and not relinquish power until he died. “Listen, he’s not going to not stop being president! You understand this?! His idea is to stay in until he drops dead!” she screeched.
“That’s it! He’s not even conceding it now so imagine if he actually did win the election. It’s over!” De Niro agreed. “We’re going to have such civil strife. All the things he says because everybody is now on to him where he projects what he’s saying. It’s what he wants, what he envisions the world to be, which is chaos and craziness, total craziness.”
Like Christy, Fondacaro refused to rebut de Niro — both of them are just mad that he said what he said.