The Jeer Hunter: De Niro’s embarrassing spectacle outside the Trump trial
“Always keep your mouth shut,” Robert De Niro’s Jimmy Conway advises Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill in one of the most iconic scenes in “Goodfellas.”
If only De Niro would take his own character’s advice.
At the behest of the Biden campaign, De Niro appeared at a press conference outside of the courtroom where closing arguments were being made at Donald Trump’s trial.
The result was a meandering mess emblematic of President Biden’s floundering reelection effort.
It began with a boilerplate opening statement from a low-energy campaign emissary.
“We’re not here today because of what’s going on over there,” he insisted implausibly while gesturing toward the courthouse and reading half-heartedly from a monitor below him.
“And of course, we are happy to have Robert De Niro, a native New Yorker who can spot BS a mile away and isn’t afraid to call it out.”
How will the actor react when he watches back the bizarre spectacle he participated in this morning, then?
Trump’s first criminal trial has not paid the political dividends Democrats had hoped it would.
While Trump has only himself to blame for many of the legal battles he finds himself embroiled in, voters can see Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case for the petty, zombified husk that it is.
That’s why Trump continues to dominate the polls in spite of the salivating liberal press corps’ ceaseless coverage of the trial in all of its unsavory glory.
Well, that and Biden’s failed presidency.
On myriad issues — immigration, gender ideology, and Israel’s righteous war against Hamas included — the commander-in-chief continues to appeal to the far-left of his coalition to the dismay of the median voter.
Is it really the judgment of the Biden campaign that the remedy to these challenges is to trot out an 80-year-old celebrity to aimlessly rant outside of Trump’s trial in deep blue New York?
De Niro’s speech was perfectly representative of that which has the country primed to send Biden packing.
It was overwrought; “Donald Trump wants to destroy not only this city, but the country and eventually, he could destroy the world,” he explained to his perceived lessers.
It was self-important; “I needed to be involved and wanted to be involved,” boasted De Niro.
At times, it was downright insulting; “The twin towers fell just over here,” he noted in a tortured comparison to Trump, “But we vowed we would not allow terrorists to change our way of life.”
And perhaps most notably, De Niro’s rambling monologue was reminiscent of Biden’s own strained attempts at communicating with the public; This isn’t “The Irishman,” there are no de-aging effects on the campaign trail.
“I owe this city a lot,” began De Niro in one particularly painful digression.
“And that’s why it’s so weird that Donald Trump is just across the street. Because he doesn’t belong in my city. I don’t know where he belongs, but he certainly doesn’t belong here.”
De Niro’s complaint is that Trump is present for the preposterous criminal trial he’s been legally obliged to attend by a Democratic prosecutor?
By the end of the presser, those with the misfortune of watching it must have felt the same way Robert Hur did after his dizzying interview with Biden last year.
Even when Biden himself is nowhere to be found, his wayward campaign finds a way to highlight his fatal flaws.
Against all the available evidence, Biden and his team remain convinced that they can ignore Americans’ substantive policy concerns while leveraging his popularity (and Trump’s unpopularity) among the celebrity class to earn their support.
Good luck with that — President Clinton and Vice President Kaine might have something to say about that course.
The truth is that Americans are well aware of Trump’s personal failings, and they’ve already decided that they’re worth the cost of his policies, considering the alternative.
Harping on those failings — especially by way of yet another elderly narcissist outside of a politicized legal proceeding — isn’t moving the needle.
If Biden’s campaign wants to reverse his fortunes at the polls, it’ll need to abandon unbecoming stunts like the one it pulled on Tuesday and make a positive case for its principal.
The only trouble is: The stunts are being pulled out precisely because there’s no such case to make.
