The Dixie Chicks said they were ashamed of President Bush in 2003 and lost everything overnight.
Robert De Niro just told a room full of New York activists he can't love America – and nobody's surprised anymore.
That's the problem, which is why nobody's even surprised.
What He Said Sunday Night
De Niro took the stage at a "Rise Up, Sing Out" event in Manhattan and delivered something that should end a career.
"Our country isn't so lovable right now," he told the crowd.
Then he compared loving America to staying with an abuser.
"Loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser," he said.
He kept going.
"I can't love a country that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more," he added. "I can't love a country that's led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant."
That's Robert De Niro – a man who has made hundreds of millions of dollars in the United States, in an industry the United States built, protected by a legal system the United States maintains – standing in front of a crowd in New York City and saying he cannot love this country.
He even admitted the obvious himself: "For most of my life, of course, I did love this country. The United States of America welcomed my immigrant ancestors. It gave me, my family, and my fellow citizens such rich opportunities and extraordinary freedoms."
He knows exactly what this country gave him.
But he said he can't love it anyway.
The Audience That Stopped Showing Up
When the Dixie Chicks told a London crowd they were ashamed President Bush was from Texas in 2003, country radio stations didn't debate it.
They banned the music, rented steamrollers, and crushed the albums in the parking lot.
The biggest-selling all-female band in American history became radioactive overnight.
De Niro has been running the same play for eight years – screaming at Trump from every available platform, crying on MSNBC, calling for resistance – and the audience has been responding in the only language Hollywood understands.
https://twitter.com/FoxNews_Flash/status/2066574036721967490?s=20
In March 2025, De Niro starred in The Alto Knights – a mob drama with a $50 million budget, a script from the writer of Goodfellas, and De Niro playing two legendary gangsters.
It opened to $3.1 million.
Warner Bros. needed $125 million just to break even.
The film earned $9 million total – one of the biggest flops of the year, one of the biggest of De Niro's career.
Americans didn't boycott.
They just stopped caring.
White House Response
White House spokesman Steven Cheung didn't waste words.
"Robert DeNiro is a washed-up has-been who hasn't been relevant in 30 years," Cheung told Fox News Digital. "Now, he just beclowns himself by spewing hate speech and inciting violence against others. Instead of embarrassing himself every time he speaks, he should seek immediate treatment for a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain."
That's the appropriate register for this situation.
What the Dixie Chicks Figured Out That De Niro Never Will
The Dixie Chicks said twelve words about one president over one war and paid for it for a decade.
De Niro has spent eight years telling half the country their president is a tyrant and their love of America makes them abuse victims – and nobody's renting steamrollers.
You can see it in how the speeches keep escalating.
The Dixie Chicks got obliterated and went quiet.
De Niro gets ignored and gets louder. Sunday he compared loving America to spousal abuse.
In February, he was crying on Nicolle Wallace's podcast calling Trump "the enemy of this country."
Last fall, he was at No Kings protests calling Trump "King Donald the First."
Nothing lands. Nothing changes. So he turns it up again.
He's 82 years old.
His last movie made $3 million on a $50 million budget.
The people he's been trying to mobilize for eight years didn't stop Trump once.
The country he says he can't love re-elected the man he called a tyrant.
The Dixie Chicks had the self-awareness to know they'd crossed a line with people who mattered to their career.
De Niro gave up on those people a long time ago.
He's playing to a room full of activists in Manhattan who already agree with him, collecting applause for comparing America to an abusive husband, and calling it resistance.
America didn't stop loving Robert De Niro.
He just stopped making anything worth loving him for.
Sources:
- Hanna Panreck, "De Niro says he can't love America, compares country to abusive husband," Fox News, June 15, 2026.
- Steven Cheung, White House statement to Fox News Digital, June 15, 2026.
- Christian Toto, "Anti-Trump De Niro: Box Office Poison," Hollywood in Toto, March 19, 2025.
- "Robert De Niro's New Crime Movie Just Flopped At The Box Office," SlashFilm, March 24, 2025.
- "Robert De Niro Speaks Up in Support of Anti-Trump Protests," Rolling Stone, 2025.
