RAGING BULL

Robert De Niro: I Will No Longer Be Punching Donald Trump in the Face

The acting icon—and devoted Democrat—sat down with Jimmy Kimmel on Wednesday night to discuss the election of Donald Trump and his threat to ‘punch him in the face.’

Robert De Niro is, needless to say, no fan of Donald J. Trump.

The Oscar-winning fellow New Yorker recorded a video for the #VoteYourFuture campaign that was rejected for its partisanship. In it, the film legend—and longtime Democrat—is seen ranting against the former reality-show host, branding him “so blatantly stupid,” “a punk,” “a pig,” and “an embarrassment to this country,” concluding: “I’d like to punch him in the face.” If that weren’t enough, mere days ago De Niro, 73, urged the crowd at the Hollywood Film Awards to vote for Hillary Clinton, branding Trump “totally insane” and warning that “We have the opportunity to prevent comedy from turning into a tragedy.”

Well, late Wednesday night the Taxi Driver star made a post-election appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and appeared far more civil when it came to now President Trump.

“I’m not feeling good,” said the mild-mannered De Niro of the election results. When Kimmel asked whether he still plans on punching Trump in the face, De Niro replied, “I can’t [punch Trump] now, he’s the president. And I have to respect that position, although we all know what he…” De Niro trailed off with a snicker—to the delight of the crowd. “You know, I just have to see what he’s gonna do and how he’s really gonna follow through on certain things. As we can see now in a lot of cities, a lot of people are getting very upset and protesting.”

Kimmel then grilled De Niro about the anti-Trump protests going on across the country, with the comedian claiming that they are counterproductive. “I’m sure President Obama is speaking from his own personal experience when he didn’t get a lot of support, and he’s saying, ‘Hey, we have to… you know, we’re all on the same team.’ But occasionally,” Kimmel continued, “teammates do punch each other in the face.”“You know,” replied De Niro, “maybe [Obama] will when he sees him tomorrow.”Then, Kimmel playfully asked the actor about whether he plans to ban Trump from his stable of restaurants—which includes Nobu, Locanda Verde, Tribeca Grill, and a host of others.

“That’s a good question!” replied a chuckling De Niro. Later on, he even revealed that he has Italian citizenship, joking: “I’m probably going to have to move there.”

Like Samantha Bee and Seth Meyers before him, Kimmel also appeared stunned by the election of President Trump.

“I gotta tell you something: I had the weirdest, weirdest dream last night. Remember that guy who used to host The Apprentice? I dreamed we elected him president,” he said during his opening monologue.

“I think it was even a big surprise to Donald Trump,” Kimmel went on. “Did you see his victory speech? He didn’t want this. He wanted to win, but he doesn’t actually want to be president. This was not the plan for the remainder of his life. His plan was to go home to Mar-a-Lago, play 5,000 rounds of golf, phone in to Trump TV for 10 years, and then die on the toilet. That was his plan. There’s just no way even he thought he was going to win this!”

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Marlow Stern

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