A week ago yesterday, famed actor Robert De Niro made headlines before introducing Bruce Springsteen at the 2018 Tony Awards by cussing out the current US president. "I'm gonna say one thing: Fuck Trump," he said. "It's no longer 'down with Trump'. It's 'fuck Trump'." He got a standing ovation from the crowd.
Yesterday, however, a Trump supporter struck back at the 74-year-old De Niro. The Taxi Driver and Meet The Parents is currently directing A Bronx Tale on Broadway in New York, where he also lives.
At the end of the performance yesterday, a man unfurled a giant banner Trump 2020 banner that read 'Keep America Great', a play on Trump's original campaign slogan, 'Make America Great Again'. The incident, naturally, was photographed and shared on Twitter:
TMZ wrote that most of the crowd seemed to ignore the man, who was soon removed from the theatre by security guards.
It also seems that De Niro himself wasn't actually present at the performance, so wasn't there to actually see the banner in the flesh. Which might have made the whole thing a lot more interesting.
Yesterday's incident was clearly a direct response to De Niro's outspoken views on the 45th American president, who he has made his hatred of Donald Trump's politics very clear.
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Doing so has also opened up a debate about the nature of free speech and whether it's OK for a celebrity in a position of power to use a public forum as a platform for political proselytizing.
The protest comes as a storm is raging at the fact that US immigration officers are separating the children of illegal immigrants from their parents and reportedly keeping them inside cages at processing centres.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: US News, Robert De Niro, Donald Trump, Politics, Protest