Robert De Niro turned a discussion about his 9/11 memory into a warning about President Donald Trump’s second term, saying Americans forget recent history and are now “in that situation right now with the whole political situation.”
The 83-year-old actor made the comments while promoting the Netflix documentary “Tribeca 25,” about the film festival he launched with longtime business partner Jane Rosenthal after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Gayle King told De Niro the story still needed to be retold because some people no longer understand how devastating the attacks were.
De Niro answered by bringing up his teenage daughter, then moved from generational memory to the country’s current politics.
Robert DeNiro whines that living under the Trump administration today is like the aftermath of 9/11:
"We’re in that situation right now with the whole political situation because people forget what happened.”pic.twitter.com/SUdlkqWqEK
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) September 9, 2026
“Well, yes, it’s also because kids and my kids — my teenage daughter doesn’t really understand,” De Niro said. “It just shows how if you don’t remind people what happened so recently, they’re going to forget. Generations that we’re in that situation right now with the whole political situation, because people forget what happened.”
De Niro’s political target became clearer when the conversation turned to Tribeca itself.
He described the festival as “an act of defiance,” then agreed that the same description still applied under Trump.
Robert De Niro.
The guy who spent years screaming about Trump on cable.
Now he’s holding a red shirt that says TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT.
President Trump posted: “Even this jerk is beginning to get it!” 😂
LOL!! Hollywood’s cooked. pic.twitter.com/75XY0hPOYP
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) September 6, 2026
“Well, it is, it is,” De Niro said. “And we felt if anyone was going to start coming at us or coming in with the nonsense, we’re going to be ready for it.”
The actor then ripped directly into Trump and his administration.
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“And we now see more and more how insane this administration is, how insane Donald Trump is, and he has to be gotten out,” De Niro said. “And we’ve got to get back on track with this country.”
De Niro said Tribeca could still serve as a vehicle against Trump and the damage the actor blamed on him.
“So, however we can do something with this festival to oppose him and all the destruction he’s responsible for, we’re there,” De Niro said.
Before the Trump comments, De Niro had recalled the morning that pushed him and Rosenthal toward founding the festival.
He said he had been in Midtown and was supposed to fly to California, but instead returned downtown after the attacks began.
“I was just about to fly to California. I was at a meeting in Midtown, and instead of going to the airport, I came back down here, and saw the tower, the North Tower, the smoke coming out, and so on,” De Niro said.
De Niro said he watched the South Tower collapse and then looked at CNN to confirm what he had just seen.
“I couldn’t believe, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I looked to my left where I have a big television and so confirmed it on CNN.”
With Lower Manhattan covered in dust near Ground Zero, De Niro and Rosenthal searched for a way to help downtown recover. Tribeca Film Festival began eight months later.
“It just seemed like the right thing to do,” De Niro said.
The CBS appearance fit a familiar De Niro pattern, with film promotion and award-show moments repeatedly turning into attacks on Trump.
He called Trump a “pig,” a “punk” and a “bulls*** artist” before the 2016 election, then drew a standing ovation at the 2018 Tony Awards after shouting, “F*ck Trump.”
His 2019 American Icon Awards appearance honoring Al Pacino included a call for Trump’s “impeachment and imprisonment.” That same year, De Niro called Trump “evil” and said, “I can’t wait to see him in jail.”
At the 2020 SAG Awards, a lifetime achievement honor gave De Niro another platform for politics, including references to “abuse of power” and a “dire” political climate.
His 2024 visit to “The View” went far enough that ABC producers repeatedly cut his microphone while he compared Trump to Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and warned of “civil strife” if Trump returned to the Oval Office.
Robert De Niro blasted Donald Trump last night at the Cannes Film Festival: “We are fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. It’s time for everyone who cares about liberty to organize, to protest. And when there are elections, of course, to vote” pic.twitter.com/6u1PgYh4VM
— Marco Foster (@MarcoFoster_) May 15, 2025
De Niro sounded just as bleak in August when USA Today asked him what made him hopeful.
“I don’t even use the word ‘hope’ anymore with [Trump’s] administration,” De Niro said. “They have to be gotten out.”
He also called Trump supporters “stupid,” said some follow him “under any conditions” and described that support as “a cult, I guess, in some ways.”
“They ought to know better, the rest of his gang. We can’t have them in the office anymore. It can’t be,” De Niro said.
The actor also pointed to Trump’s years hosting NBC’s “The Apprentice” as a possible reason he reached voters.
“Kids are looking at [it in] their mid-teens, then they’re eligible to vote later and they vote with a family,” De Niro said. “I think that part of the country watching ‘The Apprentice’ had a tremendous influence. I could be wrong on why he got elected. It’s crazy.”
Trump has not left De Niro’s criticism unanswered. He previously mocked the actor as a “very low IQ individual” who had taken “too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies.”
The online feud has also moved into AI imagery. In July, Trump shared a fake video showing himself as a doctor who had successfully treated De Niro and others for a made-up syndrome.
De Niro later rejected the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” label.
“‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ is because he’s given it to you for a reason. People resent deeply what he’s been doing,” De Niro told USA Today.
He also told CBS News that Trump “reverts things and inverts them and twists them around,” calling it “silly nonsense” and “a way to deflect.”
Earlier this week, Trump posted another apparently AI-generated image, this time showing De Niro holding a red shirt that read, “TRUMP IS MY PRESIDENT.”
“Even this jerk is beginning to get it,” Trump wrote.
De Niro’s latest Trump comments came as Bruce Springsteen was also tying entertainment work to anti-Trump politics.
Springsteen told Rolling Stone that his “Land of Hope and Dreams American Tour” was the show he wanted to make, even though some people objected to the politics onstage.
“This was the show I wanted to make, the story I wanted to tell,” Springsteen said.
The 77-year-old singer said he knew people had been “vehement about the content of the show,” but accepted that reaction.
“I always made the records I wanted to make and then went out and found the audience for them,” Springsteen said.
Rolling Stone reported that Springsteen had not planned another tour until Renee Good and Alex Pretti were killed by federal immigration officers in Minneapolis.
“I’m out there to perform that music and to provide its message,” Springsteen said. “Minneapolis occurred, so I wrote ‘Streets of Minneapolis,’ and that fired the whole project, really, into being.”