Some were confused by actor Robert De Niro’s May 28 tirade outside the Manhattan Courthouse, where Trump has been on trial for weeks. Others were amused. Still others, like MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski, were almost outraged.
Brzezinski told Michael Tyler, Biden’s campaign communications director that she wondered why the campaign decided to hold a press conference near the courthouse, adding, “I don’t know. It doesn’t feel right to me at all.”
Tyler said that DeNiro was positioned outside the courthouse because, well, that’s where the media has been for weeks. He went on to add that Trump “needed to answer” for his threat to democracy and his willingness to “embrace political violence.” It seemed unimportant that Trump was, at the time of the press conference, ‘answering” for another “crime” the Democrat party had cooked up for him.
Tyler once again cited the now-debunked claim that Trump called for a literal “bloodbath” if he lost the election, as well as the oft-misquoted Trump declaration that he would rule as a dictator “on day one.”
But Brzezinski remained unconvinced, noting that she called it “unbecoming of office” when members of Congress visited the courthouse in solidarity with Trump. “American citizens are not supposed to politicize a court proceeding, and I feel the same way about the [Biden] campaign,” she noted before asking Tyler if, in retrospect, he thought it was a good idea.
De Niro’s exhaustive list of Trump alarms included threats to America’s freedoms and “humanity.” He repeated his claims that Trump wanted to destroy New York, the United States, and the entire world. Unsurprisingly, he has been tapped in a Biden campaign ad.
The theme was a familiar one. Trump incited an “insurrection,” and a second Trump term would be the end of life as we know it. De Niro added to the playbook with claims that Trump would never leave office if reelected, there will never again be an election, and that Trump is “guilty” no matter what the jury decides in the hush money case. “We all know it!” De Niro, who notably is not an attorney although he played one in two movies, declared.
The press conference clearly indicates a desperate Team Biden, who orchestrated the trials they now claim take up too much valuable media campaigning time. Instead of distancing himself from the Trump lawfare Americans now believe is at play in the former president’s legal battles, he chooses to photobomb from the side and reclaim the attention he feels he deserves.
In fact, The New York Times revealed that Biden has a speech locked and loaded to be delivered from the White House to cover Trump’s conviction or, as Democrats fear, his acquittal of charges. Laughably, Team Biden thinks that delivering the speech from the White House and not the campaign trail will seem less political.
Just as Democrats assumed Americans would buy that a Biden campaign rally featuring long-time Trump foe De Niro outside of the now-famous courthouse wasn’t political.
It’s hard to imagine what strategist produced the idea of putting a demented, aging white male actor in front of a podium to defend another demented, aging white male. For Trump supporters, it’s just another old man calling them “gangsters.”
During his appearance, De Niro was heckled, booed, and treated to a car alarm. He had a verbal altercation with a man wearing a MAGA hat who called him a has-been. While De Niro stopped short at Biden’s approach of calling a heckler a “lying, dog-faced pony soldier,” he was not pleased. “You’re not going to intimidate. That’s what Trump does.” he began, chastising the crowd before finally responding to another heckler with the old gem, “F— you.”
Like most Democratic strategies to keep Biden in power, this one was an epic failure. De Niro was all but forced to end his press conference early and flee from Trump supporters. In Trump’s words, De Niro got “MAGA’d.”
But Biden can still relate to De Niro – they are both dirty grandpas.
