Robert De Niro says he is looking forward to Trump being in jail: 'He’s another form of being'
Robert De Niro appeared on MSNBC’s ‘The Last Word’ on Thursday, June 11, and predicted that President Donald Trump would be in jail one day. While discussing playing disgraced investor Bernie Madoff in ‘The Wizard of Lies’, De Niro said, “They didn’t allow much access the way I understand it to Madoff. With Trump when he’s in jail and that I am certainly looking forward to, when he’s in jail, if they give him a platform there, he’ll never keep his mouth shut.
“Madoff, for some reason, they stopped. I know people that interviewed him had very limited access to him. But with Trump, it will be—he’s another form of being.” The 76-year-old continued: “When you look at Madoff and Trump, they both seem to have that sociopathic quality of zero empathy, no ability to see what it’s like to be somebody else.”
“That’s what I realized right after he was elected when I was on Jimmy Kimmel. I said give him a chance, always give somebody the benefit of the doubt. But that was not the case. He’s been worse than any of us could have imagined, any of us could have imagined. It’s — there is something, you know, I don’t want to call him names. I’ve done all that. He’s worse than we could ever imagine. It’s beyond comprehension,” De Niro added.
‘The Irishman’ star recently opened up about being a white father to six biracial children amid the nationwide protests against police brutality and racism in the US following the May 25 death of George Floyd. During his virtual appearance on ‘The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon’ on Thursday, De Niro spoke about raising biracial kids and how he too has had his share of ignorance when it came to racism and his own privilege. “My children are all half black and I don't have, even me, I take certain things for granted,” he admitted.
Acknowledging that as a white man in the USA, he has more opportunities, the Hollywood star said: “When people say that they tell their kids, 'Keep your hands [out] when you're stopped by any cops, keep your hands on the steering wheel, don't make a sudden move, don't put your hands below, don't do this,' you understand that. That's scary. That has to change.”
De Niro is the father of Drena (48), and, son Raphael (44) with his ex-wife Diahnne Abbott. The actor also shares twins Julian and Aaron (24), with his ex Toukie Smith, and son Elliot (22), and daughter, Helen (8), with his ex-wife Grace Hightower.
“Anybody who hurts another person for no reason other than self-defense or the defense of other people around shouldn't be doing that job,” he said, adding: “I’m not a cop, so I don’t know the day-to-day stuff that they go through. But still, there has to be a change and people have to be trained and be more sensitive to certain things. Not that people aren’t many times, but there are still people who are not and that’s got to change.”