Donald Trump’s long list of celebrity haters are slowly, sadly coming to terms with the fact that the Republican will be sworn in as the President of the United States come January. Robert De Niro had a particularly somber response, comparing the news to one of the most tragic events in American history.
“I feel like I did after 9/11,” the actor said of the election on The Hollywood Reporter‘s “Awards Chatter” podcast. “And we’ll just see what happens,” he continued. “There will be many, many, many, many, many people watching.”
De Niro is a native New Yorker who watched the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapse in 2011 from his apartment just several blocks away.
The actor described the experience to The Guardian as “beyond belief.”
“I didn’t lose a relative or close friend when the towers fell,” he said, “but after the attacks, whatever I had done, whatever I was striving for, had no meaning; it all just stopped.”
De Niro has been a vocal critic of Donald Trump in the past. Just last month he expressed his desire to punch the Republican nominee in the face.
“He’s a punk, he’s a dog, he’s a pig, he’s a con, a bulls–t artist, a mutt who doesn’t know what he’s talking about, doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t care, thinks he’s gaming society, doesn’t pay his taxes. He’s an idiot,” De Niro said in a clip recorded for the #VoteYourFuture campaign that the producers excluded from the final video.
The Hollywood Reporter podcast with De Niro was recorded on Nov. 10, but will air in its entirety this week.
