Robert De Niro calls Trump a 'weird twisted president who thinks he's a gangster' without any sense of 'honor'
Robert De Niro, who has starred in a number of mafia and gangster-themed movies over his long and successful career and has never minced his words when it came to voicing what he thought about the current POTUS, has called Donald Trump a "weird twisted president who thinks he's a gangster!"
The veteran actor made the comments during his appearance on BBC's 'The Graham Norton Show' while he discussed the ongoing appeal of the genre.
De Niro added that even when he played a bad guy on the silver screen, his characters had a sense of "honor" that was missing from Trump's presidency.
"Today, we have a weird twisted president who thinks he's a gangster, who's not even a very good gangster," said the 'Goodfellas' star.
"Gangsters have honor, you shake a hand and they have your word and you have theirs and that's it. But with this guy, it's not the case," he shared.
The actor added that regardless of the current political state of the country, the public has not lost their appreciation for gangster movies.
"I guess it's because they defy the law, yet have their own laws, structure, and culture. There's more honor. Especially with 'The Godfather' at the time of the Vietnam War," he shared.
"The idea of respect and knowing right from wrong [among gangsters] was more than what we were seeing from our leaders. We were not being told the truth about what was really going on," De Niro noted.
The 76-year-old actor was on the show to promote his latest movie, 'The Irishman', directed by Martin Scorsese, where De Niro plays gangland enforcer Frank Sheeran.
The film, which is adapted from the book 'I Heard You Paint Houses' is described as "an epic saga of organized crime in post-war America"
The Netflix production also stars actors Al Pacino, Joe Pesci, and Harvey Keitel and is set to drop in November this year.