It should come as no surprise that actor Robert De Niro thinks President Donald Trump is a “piece of shit.” But it might shock some to know who the Taxi Driver star believes is the Democratic candidate best capable of beating Trump in 2020.
“Buttigieg I like a lot,” De Niro told the Daily Beast. “He’s got all the credentials—Rhodes Scholar, Afghanistan veteran—even though he’s young, and if he could get a chance it could be something special, I think.”
“As a gay person, he’s someone who comes from a marginalized community, so people from other ethnic groups can identify with him, even if they’re not gay, because they know what it’s like,” De Niro said, not noting, however, that Buttigieg has long struggled to garner support from both black and Latino voters. The South Bend, Indiana, mayor, for instance, is polling at “zero percent among black voters” in the state of South Carolina, according to fresh data from Quinnipiac University.
(Insult to injury? A black South Bend city councilman just endorsed Joe Biden over Buttigiege, citing the mayor’s low support from black voters).
“I think he’s the best for what we need now. I have friends who really like him a lot, as I do,” De Niro said. “With Obama, he had the middle name “Hussein” and a lot of things that people tried to use against him—including Trump with the whole stupid “birther” thing—and he went right through it. It could happen with Buttigieg. And there’s Bloomberg.”
For De Niro, Biden “means well … he’s a guy who would do the right thing, make the right decision.” As for Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (D-VT), the Irishman star thinks they are “too extreme” to defeat Trump. But former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg (who just purchased $33 million in TV ads) “can run the country as an adult.”
So far, the actor’s track record on endorsements for those seeking to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot box isn’t good. Robert De Niro endorsed two-time failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in April 2015, saying at the time that “she has earned the right to be president.”
Jerome Hudson is Breitbart News Entertainment Editor and author of the bestselling book 50 Things They Don’t Want You to Know. Order your copy today. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson.