Robert De Niro urges Americans to continue protesting against Donald Trump.
Following Saturday’s nationwide No Kings protests, De Niro told MSNBC that the country needs to show “a lot more” resistance because that’s “the only thing politicians will allow.” He added that we need to make sure that lawmakers “fear the wrath of the public more than the wrath of President Trump.”
“We can’t give up,” De Niro said. “We can’t give up on him, because he’s not going to leave the White House. He doesn’t want to leave the White House. He’s not going to leave the White House. Everybody thinks he’s going to do this, he’s going to do that, and they’re just fooling themselves.”
He added, “Republicans, more than anything, are going along with it because they know it. This is a classic bully situation. We’ve seen it before, and there’s no other way to stand up to a bully. We’ve got to face him, fight him tooth and nail, drive them back, bring him down. That’s the only way this thing will work.”
According to MSNBC, nearly 7 million people participated in the Oct. 18 Norkings protest. ICE’s aggressive immigration enforcement remains a key issue in demonstrations across the country, as it was during the first No King protests in June. The presence of the National Guard in major cities and significant cuts to federal programs were also major motivators for participants.
De Niro was one of many Hollywood mainstays who expressed support for the No Kings movement. On October 9, he appeared in a video on the TikTok account of the political activist group Indivisible, encouraging people to join the No Kings protests.
“The first No Kings protest took place 250 years ago,” De Niro said. “Americans decided they did not want to live under the rule of George III. They declared independence and fought a bloody war for democracy. Since then, we have spent two and a half centuries building a democracy, often challenging, sometimes messy, but always essential.”
“Now we have a king candidate who wants to take that away, and that’s Donald I. That’s bullshit. Now it’s time for us to stand up again and nonviolently and loudly declare, ‘No king.'”
