Follows attack on Trump by former Republican party nominee Mitt Romney

Richard Gere has branded Donald Trump America’s version of Mussolini as the Republican establishment’s campaign to stop him stepped into high gear.

The Pretty Woman star said electing Mr Trump to be President would be a ‘slippery slope’ to deporting Jews and black people.

He spoke out as Mitt Romney, the Republican party’s nominee in the 2012 election, launched a blistering attack on Mr Trump.

Richard Gere branded Donald Trump, left, as America’s version of Benito Mussolini, right, as the Republican establishment’s campaign to stop him stepped into high gear

In a point by point indictment, Mr Romney said that the billionaire real estate mogul was ‘playing the American public for suckers’ and that he was a ‘phony, a fraud’.

The intervention by Mr Romney is the most public move yet in the civil war among Republicans over Mr Trump which is splitting the Republican party.

Senior leaders believe they have two weeks to stop him and they fear that if he goes up against Hillary Clinton he will lose.

Mr Gere gave his withering assessment of Mr Trump in an interview with the Evening Standard in which he branded him a ‘demagogue, a clown’.

He said: ‘Here’s a guy who’s obviously Mussolini. How is it possible that people would be supporting this guy?’

Mr Gere said that under a Trump Presidency he will ‘get rid of Jews, the blacks’.

He said: ‘Anyone that we perceive as a problem, we’ll get rid of. This is how it starts. Intelligent people aren’t seeing this - don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s just idiots who are backing Trump - this kind of thinking is a slippery slope’.

Trump has already flirted with Mussolini and retweeted a quote from an account mocking the dictator which read: ‘It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep’.