Twenty-five years ago tomorrow, nearly 3,000 Americans were murdered in the worst terrorist attack ever carried out on our soil. If you’re old enough to remember – and most of us reading this are – the images never left. The impossibly blue sky. The smoke swallowing lower Manhattan. The phone calls no one wanted to make and no one wanted to receive. That day produced something almost unheard of in modern American life: total, unquestioning solidarity. We weren’t sorting ourselves into red and blue. We were just Americans, wounded and furious together.

As the 25th anniversary approaches, you’d think anyone with a microphone and a camera pointed at them would handle that memory with care. You’d think even the most politically consumed celebrities could shelve their grievances for one morning of honest remembrance. Not a chance.

From the Daily Wire:

Robert De Niro appeared to invoke President Donald Trump’s second term Wednesday while warning that Americans risk repeating history if they forget the lessons of September 11, seemingly equating post-9/11 national trauma with living under Trump’s second term.

Appearing on CBS Mornings to hawk his new Netflix documentary “Tribeca 25,” the 83-year-old Hollywood veteran attempted to draw a direct line between the darkest day in modern American history and the current political landscape.

There it is. On the eve of the most solemn anniversary in modern American history, Robert De Niro parked himself on national television and converted the memory of September 11 into a weapon against a duly elected president.

A sacred day, hijacked

De Niro told host Gayle King that his own teenage daughter doesn’t grasp what happened on 9/11. Fair enough – that’s a real problem worth discussing. But instead of staying there, he veered straight into a murky warning about “the whole political situation” and how “people forget what happened.” The subtext was about as subtle as a car alarm.

Given De Niro’s years-long fixation on Donald Trump, no one with a functioning memory is going to grant him the benefit of the doubt here. He knows exactly what he was doing.

Here’s the thing that stings. A documentary about Tribeca’s recovery after September 11 could have been genuinely powerful. It could have reminded younger generations what collective sacrifice and resilience actually look like – not as hashtags, but as lived experience. De Niro had that opportunity sitting right in front of him. He torched it so he could take one more swing at a president he despises.

What does that tell the families who still set an empty chair at Thanksgiving? The firefighters who climbed seventy, eighty, ninety floors knowing they probably weren’t coming back? The veterans who shipped out to Afghanistan and Iraq because of that morning? It tells them their loss is a convenient prop – emotional wallpaper for a millionaire actor’s grudge match.

A pattern, not a slip

Nobody should be shocked. De Niro’s compulsion to commandeer every stage for anti-Trump performance art is exhaustively documented. At the 2018 Tony Awards, he grabbed the microphone and shouted “F*ck Trump” to a gleeful standing ovation from Broadway’s finest. At the 2019 American Icon Awards, while supposedly honoring Al Pacino, he hijacked the podium to demand Trump’s “impeachment and imprisonment.” Even that crowd – deep in the heart of Hollywood – booed him. (When you’ve lost a room full of entertainment industry insiders, maybe reassess.)

At the 2020 SAG Awards, accepting a lifetime achievement honor, he ignored advice from comedians like Ricky Gervais and launched into yet another sermon about “abuse of power.” And during a 2024 visit to “The View,” ABC producers had to yank his microphone repeatedly after he spiraled into a profanity-soaked rant comparing Trump to Hitler and Mussolini.

Trump himself once described De Niro as a “very low IQ individual” who had taken “too many shots to the head by real boxers in movies.” It was meant as a jab. Feels more like a clinical observation at this point.

What the comparison actually says

Set aside the celebrity drama for a moment and confront what De Niro actually implied. He suggested that living under a president chosen by tens of millions of American voters is somehow analogous to the aftermath of September 11. One was a deliberate act of war that incinerated 2,977 innocent people. The other is democracy working exactly the way it’s supposed to. Confusing the two isn’t courageous commentary. It’s morally bankrupt.

Tomorrow, Americans across this country will pause. They’ll lower their flags. They’ll read the names aloud, one by one, the way we’ve done for a quarter century. Some will hear bagpipes and be right back at a funeral they attended in 2001. What September 11 demands – what it has always demanded – is honesty, gravity, and shared reverence. Not another graying celebrity treating our darkest day as his personal megaphone. The 2,977 who never came home earned so much better than Robert De Niro.

Key Takeaways

• De Niro exploited the eve of 9/11’s 25th anniversary to take a veiled political shot at President Trump.
• His documented history of anti-Trump outbursts reveals habitual abuse of public platforms.
• Equating democratic governance with a terrorist attack deeply dishonors the 2,977 who died.
• The September 11 anniversary demands shared reverence, not celebrity grandstanding.

Sources: Daily Wire