By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA
Newswire Senior National Correspondent (NNPA NEWSWIRE)
Drawing from his experiences as a New Yorker, De Niro attested to the city’s firsthand knowledge of Trump, whom he characterized as unfit for leadership. He pointed out that New Yorkers had already tried to warn the world about Trump in 2016, but their concerns went unheeded.
Hollywood legend Robert De Niro delivered a forceful and unmistakable message at The New Republic’s “Stop Trump Summit” in New York City, condemning the twice-impeached, four-times-indicted former president Donald Trump without ambiguity. Even though De Niro could not attend the event due to his ongoing recovery from COVID-19, he entrusted ex-Trump administration official Miles Taylor to read his excoriation of the 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner.
De Niro’s central message was clear: Trump is not merely a bad person, he is, in De Niro’s words, “evil.”
Drawing upon his extensive career playing various hoodlum characters and his real-life encounters with individuals of questionable moral character, De Niro offered a stark assessment of the former president, whom a civil jury found responsible this year for sexually assaulting a journalist.
“I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men,” De Niro said. “I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.
”De Niro went on to distinguish Trump from even the most notorious gangsters, remarking that while criminals often have some semblance of a moral code, Trump lacks any sense of right or wrong, ethics orempathy for others.
“He’s a wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics. No sense of right or wrong. No regard for anyone but himself,” De Niro said.
Drawing from his experiences as a New Yorker, the actor attested to the city’s firsthand knowledge of Trump, whom he characterized as unfit for leadership. He pointed out that New Yorkers had already tried to warn the world about Trump in 2016, but their concerns went unheeded.
De Niro then highlighted the consequences of Trump’s presidency, including the divisive impact on America and the failures in responding to the early 2020 crisis, referring to the COVID-19 pandemic, where Trump’s actions resulted in a significant loss of life.