Robert De Niro Rages At Donald Trump’s Arts Defunding

Yes, Mr. President, he’s talking to you.

Actor Robert De Niro on Monday blasted President Donald Trump’s proposal to slash the federal arts budget.

The actor, receiving the Chaplin Award from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in New York City, told the audience that movies go through a voting process of sorts by critics and film goers before posterity decides if they are art.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because of our government’s hostility towards art,” he said, per Deadline. “The budget proposal, among its other draconian cuts to life-saving and life-enhancing programs, eliminates the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. For their own divisive political purposes, the administration suggests that the money for these all-inclusive programs goes to rich liberal elites. This is what they now call an ‘alternative fact,’ but I call it bullshit.”

De Niro wasn’t done. “I don’t make movies for ‘rich liberal elites,’ “ he said, per the Hollywood Reporter.  “I’ve got my restaurants for that. I – and all of us speaking here tonight — make them for you.”

De Niro, a frequent critic of the president, also worked in a slap at the administration’s immigration policies, Indiewire wrote. He noted that Chaplin was “an immigrant who probably wouldn’t pass today’s ‘extreme vetting.’”

“I hope we’re not keeping out the next Chaplin,” he said.

 

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