De Niro Leads Anti-Trump Chants at NYC Free-Speech
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- Robert De Niro headlined "Rise Up, Sing Out: A Concert for the first amendment" in New York on Sunday, leading the audience in repeated chants of "shut the fuck up" directed at Donald Trump and his policies.
- De Niro cited two specific Trump quotes to justify each chant, including Trump's claim he "don't think about Americans' financial situation, not even a little bit" and his statement "I love the inflation," before adding a third chant over Trump's insistence he won the 2020 election.
- De Niro drew a domestic-abuse analogy, saying: "loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser," then listed what he said he could not love, including "stupid and inhumane wars," cuts to healthcare, "masked militias" shooting citizens, and a country "led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant."
- De Niro framed his remarks as a free-speech rebuttal, saying: "I'm pretty close to being a free speech absolutist... when I hear something I don't like, I use my own free speech to respond."
- Trump had previously fired back at De Niro after the actor called him "an idiot" earlier this year, labeling the actor "deranged," "sick and demented" with "an extremely low IQ."
- De Niro concluded with: "I want to love my country again. I want my country back," a line that echoes a recurring theme in his public feud with the president.
Why it matters: The concert underscores how celebrity-led political organizing around free-speech themes has become a reliable platform for Democrats and Hollywood figures to attack Trump in his second term, and Trump's prior personal insults toward De Niro show the antagonism is mutual — with the benefit-concert framing giving De Niro's attacks a constitutional-rhetoric wrapper rather than a partisan rally tone.
