Robert De Niro is a great actor. I have keenly followed much of his career. The thing with De Niro is that in real life, when he’s not acting, he’s not so great. When he talks politics, the myth crumbles; not because he’s a leftist — that can happen to anyone (I get itchy feet some Fridays too) — but because he has no idea what he’s talking about. It is of an extreme superficiality, a mixture of unbridled passion and cheap slogans that would make a 3-year-old child blush. 

In a recent interview on The View, the actor compared Donald Trump to Hitler and Mussolini. The mere fact that he equated Hitler with Mussolini is a recipe for disaster, but adding the former American president to the mix cooks up a combination of tenderness and melancholy toward someone who years ago was one of the last great Hollywood actors. I could equate Joe Biden with Stalin and Pol Pot, but the Democratic president has neither the intelligence nor the wickedness of Stalin or Pol Pot. It would be effective from a propaganda standpoint, but my readers, thank God, are more critical of me than De Niro fans are of the actor and would not forgive me making stupid historical comparisons. That’s another big difference today between the Right and the Left: The Left has lost all capacity for self-criticism.

“It’s gonna happen. If he gets elected, it’s going to change this country for everybody,” De Niro explains, trying to shock us. The truth is that if Trump is elected, it will have happened because a majority of Americans actually want to change this country for everybody. So I don’t know if De Niro here is criticizing Trump or becoming his best campaign adviser. I have already said that, outside of his movies, the star of the brilliant Analyze This is not the smartest guy in the class.

“Those people … support him with anger and hate — because that’s what he’s about,” says De Niro, forgetting that if anyone has been the constant object of anger and hate for years, it is not the Democrats but the Republicans, and more specifically the Trumpers. On the other hand, it was not Trump but Biden who wanted to draw a line to separate the good Americans (those on the left) from the bad ones (those on the right). 

And, as if the interview weren’t embarrassing enough, we had yet to witness the intervention of the interviewer, the famous, smart, intelligent, thoughtful, serene, sensible, sane, elegant, sympathetic, tolerant, and always truthful Whoopi Goldberg; that is, Barack Obama with a Bob Marley hairdo. “If he becomes president again, he is not going to not stop being president,” Goldberg said, displaying her talent as a philosopher, and adding, with a very progressive pacifist insinuation, that Trump will only leave when “he drops dead.” It sounds as though Goldberg is trying to win a part in a Godfather sequel.

De Niro then switched roles from political analyst to futurologist: “That’s it. He’s not even conceding it now. So imagine if he actually did win the election — it’s over. We’re going to have such civil strife.” The thing is, when those on the left predict that there will be “civil strife,” you never know if they are trying to predict or encourage it.

The Left is making the same old mistakes with Trump. On his first arrival to the White House, they used the same strategy: If Trump wins, the world goes to hell, they said. The problem is that he won, and all their predictions were proven ridiculous. Aside from some superficial controversy, the world was reasonably peaceful, the United States was once again respected on the international scene, the economy danced with timid joy, and people could devote themselves to work, fun, and their families without living in fear of danger and insecurity on the streets all the time. Trump did not open concentration camps, nor did he invade all his neighbors by land, sea, and air, nor did he set fire to Hollywood. It’s as though Hitler had turned vegan, heterosexual, and Hare Krishna.

De Niro and Goldberg are as old as Biden, and their fear mongering of the old return of fascism was already boomer decades ago, but they don’t know how to defend their ideas otherwise. We may have to thank God that they didn’t end the interview in tears, cuddling on a bed like Lennon and Yoko Ono, singing “Imagine,” and demanding that Trump immediately abandon the Vietnam offensive. 

Translated by Joel Dalmau.

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