The Biden campaign held a press conference on Tuesday morning outside the Manhattan courthouse where DA Alvin Bragg’s falsified business records trial against Donald Trump is wrapping up with closing arguments. Among those who attended the press conference was notorious anti-Trump actor Robert De Niro, who arrived donning a face mask.
As a car honked nearby, De Niro called Trump supporters "low lifes."
Addressing the Trump supporters shouting outside the courthouse, De Niro told the press, "I mean this is really — even these people over here kinda — it’s kinda crazy. It’s really crazy, and this thing, Donald Trump, has created this. He should be telling them not to do this, but he’s just, he wants to sow total chaos which he’s succeeding in some areas and places to do."
De Niro said that Trump wants to destroy New York City, the country, "and eventually he can destroy the world," adding that Trump, a fellow native New Yorker, does not belong in the city.
He said that New Yorkers used to "tolerate" Trump when he was "just another grubby real estate hustler masquerading as a big shot. A two-bit playboy lying his way into the tabloids." He added that Trump was a "clown," and that the city is "pretty accommodating" for clowns, "it’s part of the culture."
He said that Trump supporters nationwide "bought into his bullsh*t," and Trump "bought their votes with outrageous lies and empty promises. He got the most religious of Evangelicals to applaud a sinner who bragged about sexual assault and just a couple blocks from here a jury found him liable for sexual abuse."
"If Trump returns to the White House," De Niro continued, "you can kiss these freedoms goodbye that we all take for granted. And elections, forget about it. That’s over, that’s done. If he gets in, I can tell you right now, he will never leave. He will never leave. you know that. He will never leave."
"We’re not here today because of what’s going on over there," said Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler. "We’re here today because you all are here."
"We’re here primarily because of the threat that Donald Trump poses to the United States of America and to our democracy," he added, noting that two officers who were at the Capitol on January 6, Michael Fanone and Harry Dunn, were in attendance.
Tyler said that the "looming threat of MAGA extremism has only grown stronger since January 6, and so yeah, we’re gonna campaign on the president’s record, on his vision, and we’re gonna run against the extremism embodied by Donald Trump as he sits in that building or anywhere else across the country."