Anti-Trump Actor Robert De Niro Calls for Election Voter ‘Screening Process’

Two-time Oscar winner Robert De Niro, a vocal critic of President Trump, has called for voter screening at elections.In an interview with the New Statesman magazine, Mr. De Niro, 82, said that had there been a electoral vetting process, Mr. Trump might never have become president. “He never should have even been allowed to become eligible to run to be president,” Mr. De Niro said. “You think that there’d be a way to screen people.”New Statesman US Correspondent Freddie Hayward pushed back on Mr. De Niro’s comments, asking him whether his attitude formed “part of the reason that people voted for Trump?” “You’re right, but he’s not eligible because he’s just not qualified,” Mr. De Niro responded. “Every citizen is allowed the right to run — blah, blah, blah. That’s all great, but you’d think that there’d be some kind of screening process that everybody has to go through.”When the interviewer “suggested that, perhaps, this was what we call an election,” Mr. De Niro replied: “Yes, of course, it’s the election, but I think there [should be] a screening process before that. People don’t really know. It’s called low-information voters, whatever. I do the same thing, but there are people doing it in a way that, sadly – it’s dangerous.”Ironically Mr. De Niro’s preference for an election screening program are not markedly dissimilar to the executive order announced by Mr. Trump on March 25 that created a nationwide list of eligible voters and restricted mail-in voting. This was subsequently blocked by a federal judge in Seattle.Mr. De Niro, whose credits include “Goodfellas” and “The Untouchables” has frequently cursed Mr. Trump in recent times, calling him “a petulant little punk,” and saying he’d “like to “punch him in the face,” but this is the first time he has called for an election screening process.He spoke at the “No Kings” protest in New York City last month. When asked by reporters outside a courthouse on April 1, while attending a Supreme Court hearing regarding birthright citizenship, whether he suffered from “Trump Deragement Syndrome,” Mr De Niro said that was “nonsense.”“People don’t like him for a reason,” Mr. De Niro added. “All the terrible things he’s done. If he did nice things, then he could have, he had the chance — he became president — to do nice things, not hateful, retribution, not just, outright mean things. If he did nice things, people would love him. But he’s got a problem. He’s damaged.”Mr. De Niro has two film projects being released this year, the Netflix thriller “The Whisper Man” and “Focker-in-Law,” the fourth movie in the Focker comedy series, alongside Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Ariana Grande.

Anti-Trump Actor Robert De Niro Calls for Election Voter ‘Screening Process’

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