Donald Trump threatens to deport Hollywood icon
In a legislative season already defined by historic friction, the ideological chasm in America was on full display Tuesday night. As President Donald Trump took to the House rostrum to deliver a record-breaking, one-hour-and-48-minute State of the Union address, a parallel universe of defiance was unfolding just blocks away at the National Press Club.
The counter-programming, titled the “State of the Swamp,” drew a “who’s who” of the Hollywood Resistance, including Mark Ruffalo and Don Lemon. But the night’s most searing indictment came from 82-year-old Academy Award winner Robert De Niro, who abandoned all diplomatic pretense in a raw, seven-minute closing address that felt less like a speech and more like a call to arms.
“Betrayed by My Country”
De Niro, whose decade-long crusade against Trump has become part of his late-career identity, arrived at the event late—delayed, ironically, by the gridlock caused by the President’s own motorcade. Once at the lectern, the Goodfellas star delivered a blistering “pre-buttal” that echoed sentiments he recently shared on MSNBC’s The Best People with Nicolle Wallace podcast.
“The bottom line is that I feel betrayed by my country,” De Niro told the room of activists, many of whom were dressed in inflatable frog suits to symbolize reclaiming the “swamp.” On the podcast, his rhetoric was even more pointed: “He’s an idiot. We gotta get rid of him. He’s gonna ruin the country… the story is our country, and Trump is destroying it. It’s sick, it’s f***** up.”
During the alternative event, De Niro painted a portrait of a president who is “failing, flailing, and desperate,” a rhetoric consistent with his past labels of Trump as an “enemy of this country” and a “vicious dictator.”
The President Fires Back: A Rhetorical Escalation
The White House was quick to respond, but it was on Truth Social where the President truly uncorked. In a lengthy, combative post, Trump didn’t just dismiss De Niro—he escalated the feud to a level that stunned legal observers by floating the prospect of deportation.
Targeting De Niro alongside Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib—both of whom had heckled or protested during his speech—Trump wrote that the lawmakers “should actually get on a boat with Trump Deranged Robert De Niro, another sick and demented person with, I believe, an extremely Low IQ.”
The President continued his personal assault, claiming he watched the actor “break down in tears” and suggesting De Niro was “even sicker than Crazy Rosie O’Donnell.” While De Niro is a lifelong American citizen born in Manhattan, the President’s suggestion that he be removed from the country marked a dramatic and potentially litigious shift in their long-running war of words.
A Nation Split Between “Golden Age” and “Betrayal”
The contrast between the two stages could not have been more stark. Inside the Capitol, Trump boasted that America is now “Bigger, Better, Richer, and Stronger than ever before,” claiming his administration has initiated a “Golden Age.” He used his record-setting time on the floor to tout tariffs and hardline immigration policies, even as Democratic Representative Al Green was escorted out for a silent protest.
Meanwhile, De Niro remained anchored in a more emotional plea. “You have to lift people up,” he said during his podcast appearance. “You have to bring them together. Period. You can’t divide people. You can’t win that way.”
As the 2026 midterms loom, the clash between Hollywood’s elder statesman and the sitting President has moved beyond mere celebrity bickering. With the President now publicly—if rhetorically—floating threats of exile against his critics, the “State of the Union” remains as fractured as ever.