Robert De Niro stood by previous comments about Donald Trump during an appearance on “The View” on Friday.
Appearing on the ABC daytime talk show to promote his new movie “The Comedian,” De Niro told the hosts that he still feels like he wants to punch the president in the face.
“How dare he say the things he does! Of course I want to punch him in the face,” the actor said, doubling down on his statements from October, when he was caught on tape railing against Trump. “It was only a symbolic thing anyway,” he said on “The View.” “It wasn’t like I was gonna go find him and [really] punch him in the face, but he’s gotta hear it.”
He added: “Sometimes when people are bullies like that, that’s what you have to do to shut them up… bully them back.”
While filming a political testimony for the non-partisan voting advocacy group Vote Your Future, De Niro responded to the question “What do you care about?” with a passionate, angry rant against the then-candidate in the video that surfaced in October.
“I mean, he’s so blatantly stupid. He’s a punk. He’s a dog. He’s a pig. He’s a con, a bulls– artist. A mutt who doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” De Niro said in the video. He continued to rail against Trump for over a minute, calling him a “national disaster” and “an embarrassment to this country.”
De Niro’s rant did not end up in the final cut of the ad — which featured dozens of other celebrities including Leonardo DiCaprio, Julia Roberts, Rami Malek, Laura Dern and Eva Longoria — but, as he indicated on “The View” on Friday, he stands behind what he said.