Robert De Niro ridicules Trump’s response to coronavirus crisis: ‘It’s like arguing with a crazy relative’

'It's beyond absurd. It's theatre of the absurd.'

Robert De Niro has ridiculed Donald Trump‘s response to the coronavirus pandemic, comparing the US president to a “crazy relative”.

Speaking in an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, the veteran actor said: “This whole thing could have been avoided if Trump had listened to the people in the Intelligence community.

“They kept telling him something was coming. What scares me is that people just were afraid to tell him the truth. If you tell him the truth then he’s gonna get mad at you and he’s gonna let you go, and then what?

“It’s crazy. It’s like like telling a crazy relative. You avoid arguing with them because they’re gonna go crazy – but they run the country!”

He continued: “There’s no choice. Your allegiance is to the country, not to him. There’s the insanity of it all. The chaos is from when it started to where we are now.”

The Taxi Driver star has long been an outspoken critic of the Republican president.

In an interview last year, he called the president a “nasty little b****”, and insisted he would refuse to ever portray him on film.

He also told The Independent he believes Trump “could start a war to get a third term” in office.

Nearly 110,000 people in the US have now died as a result of Covid-19, and the total number of cases is approaching 2 million.

In the Tonight Show segment, De Niro said that the situation was “unimaginable” and “like a surreal science fiction.”

“It’s beyond absurd,” he added. “It’s theatre of the absurd. Stop it.”