The antipathy between Robert De Niro and Donald Trump is one of the more enjoyable non-hip-hop-related celebrity beefs of our time. It’s a war of words that has given us such hits as De Niro calling Trump “jerkoff-in-chief” at the National Board of Review awards, as well as this response to De Niro banning Trump from his Nobu chain of sushi restaurants, a perfect distillation of the tendency among the right to regard an incurious nature as some sort of twisted badge of kneejerk anti-intellectual honor:
Anyway, De Niro has been talking so much shit about Trump—enough that you can almost forget his flirtation with anti-vaxxing—that he’s whittled his argument down to the basics, taking the stage at last night’s Tony Awards ostensibly to introduce Bruce Springsteen, but also to provide his most concise statement on the topic yet, via Variety:
That was De Niro saying “I’m only going to say one thing, fuck Trump. It’s no longer ‘down with Trump,’ It’s ‘fuck Trump!’” to a standing ovation from the New York elites in the crowd, who were probably extra excited by the unscripted swear words considering that the ceremony was almost three hours in at that point.
CBS, naturally, rushed to bleep out De Niro’s remarks, achieving a full deletion for the West Coast, where the awards aired with a tape delay. Some viewers appear to have gotten the whole glorious, unedited thing live, though:
And really, what else is there to say at this point?