This article is more than 11 months old

This article is more than 11 months old

The actor and longtime Trump foe Robert De Niro has hit back against his critics at Fox News, saying “Fuck ’em” – live on CNN.

Speaking to Reliable Sources on Sunday morning, De Niro said Donald Trump “should not be president, period”.

“And when you say that, folks on Fox come after you,” said host Brian Stelter.

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Stelter brought up De Niro’s famous “fuck Trump” speech at the 2018 Tony Awards – delicately describing the incident as “when you got up there and cursed”.

De Niro said: “Fuck ’em.”

“Fuck ’em,” he repeated.

Someone off screen seemed to shout: “Whoa!”

“Sorry,” De Niro said. “Sorry.”

“Well, you know, this is cable, so it’s not an FCC [Federal Communications Commission] violation, but it is still a Sunday morning,” Stelter said, before asking: “Why do you choose to go that way?”

“We are in a moment in our lives, in this country, where this guy is like a gangster,” De Niro said. “We say over and over again, ‘This is terrible, we’re in a terrible situation, we’re in a terrible situation,’ and this guy just keeps going on and on and on without being stopped.”

Amid social media uproar, one Twitter user wrote: “He was all of us in that moment.”

Another wrote “My manz” and posted a gif from the movie Casino, in which De Niro’s character stoically places a cigarette in his mouth.

Fox News said it was up to CNN to comment on why the word aired “without an apology or acknowledgement”.

CNN did not comment.

De Niro is a longstanding critic of the 45th president.

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In August 2016, before Trump won the White House, De Niro described him as “totally nuts”.

De Niro also released a video expressing his wish to punch the then-candidate in the face, describing him as “an idiot, a national disaster, an embarrassment to this country … this fool, this bozo”.

After Trump was elected, De Niro walked back his pugilistic posture, telling Jimmy Kimmel: “I can’t do that now he’s president … I have to respect that position.”