Robert De Niro blasted conservative media titan Rupert Murdoch in a new interview with The Daily Beast in which he also risked renewing hostilities with President Donald Trump and assessed the 2020 Democratic candidates.
De Niro questioned the contribution that Australian-born Murdoch, who obtained U.S. citizenship in 1985, had made to the country via his widely watched Fox News network ― whose primetime hosts routinely stump for Trump and promote white nationalist conspiracy theories and talking points.
“He’s an immigrant who became a citizen, and look what he contributed?” the star of the new Netflix movie “The Irishman” said of Murdoch in the piece published Saturday.
“Look what this guy did? It’s disgraceful — beyond disgraceful, beyond cynical,” he continued. “Fox News, it’s all about money and power. At what cost? And you’re not even an American; you’re someone who wanted to be an American, and this is what you gave us?” he added, echoing similar rhetoric that Donald Trump has used toward immigrants.
Elsewhere in the interview, De Niro described Trump (whom he has previously angered with his fierce and frequent criticism) as “a piece of shit who never should have been there in the first place” and put forward a theory about how Trump could end up serving three terms, despite the 22nd Amendment barring a president from serving more than two.
The actor also revealed his support for Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg (the mayor of South Bend, Indiana), claiming he could be “the best for what we need now.” Former Vice President Joe Biden “could get us into calmer waters” and is a guy “who would do the right thing, make the right decision,” he added, while speculating whether the policies of Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) would be “too extreme.”
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