In the waning days of the 2024 campaign, there’s a lot of buzz about the liberal celebrities who are joining Vice President Kamala Harris at her Democratic rallies. Thanks to the outsized role that “the media” — that’s the news media, entertainment media, and social media — play in our national discourse, the vacuous and vulgar pronouncements of left-wing celebrities are widely promoted as if they were actually important contributions to the political dialogue.
For the last eight years, both onscreen and online, America’s celebrities have focused their venomous and vile tirades against GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump. These attention-getting screeds are widely shared on social media and replayed on news programs, almost as an in-kind contribution to Trump’s Democratic opponents.
They can be quite nasty. “The Klan won last night,” screenwriter Aaron Sorkin fulminated after Trump’s 2016 victory. “White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons.” Six months later, CBS Late Night host Stephen Colbert denounced Trump in a nasty monologue: “Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more people marching against you than cancer....The only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c**k holster.”
“This is the most despicable man to ever inhabit the Oval Office,” actor Jason Alexander tweeted in 2020. “The guy is a total monster...He’s such a mean, nasty, hateful person,” actor Robert DeNiro snarled during an appearance on HBO’s Real Time earlier this year.
And, just one day after Trump was grazed by a bullet in a July assassination attempt, musician Kyle Gass offered this onstage birthday wish: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”
For eight years, the culture has been saturated with quotes such as these, few of which have been condemned or criticized as outside the bounds of normal discourse. From the NewsBusters’ archives, here are 24 of the worst celebrity quotes about Donald Trump from the past eight years [WARNING, extremely foul language ahead]:
■ “It’s just beyond my comprehension how anybody could support a racist misogynist moron like Donald Trump. It’s beyond my comprehension. I mean, he’s a bad guy, you know? He’s a really bad guy....There’s something wrong with him. I don’t know what a shrink would diagnose what he is, but he’s not a normal person. There’s something mentally wrong with him...He’s just vile....Oh, my God. I honestly think it would be a really dark day in American history if he were to be elected. A really dark day.”
— CSI actress Marg Helgenberger in an interview with local Washington D.C. newspaper Metro Weekly, October 20, 2016.
■ “The Klan won last night. White nationalists. Sexists, racists and buffoons....Hate was given hope. Abject dumbness was glamorized as being ‘the fresh voice of an outsider’ who’s going to ‘shake things up.’”
— Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin in a November 9, 2016 Vanity Fair article “Read the Letter Aaron Sorkin Wrote His Daughter After Donald Trump Was Elected President.”■ “I am a nasty woman. I am not as nasty as a man who looks like he bathes in Cheeto dust, who’s words are a death trap to America, Electoral College-sanctioned hate speech contaminating this National Anthem....I am not as nasty as a swastika painted on a pride flag and I didn’t know devils could be resurrected, but I feel Hitler in these streets. A mustache traded for a toupee. Nazis renamed as the cabinet....I’m not nasty like the combo of Trump and Pence being served up to me in my voting booth.”
— Actress Ashley Judd at the Women’s March as aired on C-SPAN, January 21, 2017.■ “He’s [Trump] just a gross, crook, dirty rotten, lying sack of [censored]....It’s not a political position. It’s just when you look at somebody and say that guy is a lying sack of [censored]. It’s just simple. That’s what the guy is.”
— Comedian Louis C.K. on CBS’s Late Show with Stephen Colbert, April 3, 2017.
■ “Mr. Trump, your presidency, I love your presidency. I call it, it ‘Disgrace the Nation.’ You are not the POTUS, you’re the BLOTUS (Biggest Liar of the United States), you are the glutton with the button. You are a regular ‘Gorge Washington.’ You are the Presi-dunce, but are turning into a real prick-tator. Sir, you attract more skinheads than free Rogaine. You have more people marching against you than cancer. You talk like a sign language gorilla who got hit in the head. In fact the only thing your mouth is good for is being Vladimir Putin’s c**k [bleep] holster.”
— Host Stephen Colbert on CBS’s The Late Show, May 1, 2017.■ “Donald trump is killing this country. Some of it quickly, some slowly, but he spoils and destroys everything he touches. He emboldens monsters, wielding guns, governmental power, or just smug doublespeak. Or Russia. My hate and sadness are exhausting. Die, Don. Just quietly die.”
— April 3, 2018 tweet by director Joss Whedon.■ Jay-Z: “He’s [Donald Trump] bringing out an ugly side of America that we wanted to believe was gone. And it’s still here and we still gotta deal with it. We have to have the conversation. We have to have tough conversation. We have to talk about the ‘N’ word. And we have to talk about why white men are so privileged in this country.”
Host David Letterman: “I completely agree.... And I’ve said this a thousand times. We don’t need any more evidence....Is he a racist, is he not a racist? I’m telling you, you’re having a debate over whether a guy is a racist, chances are that guy is a racist....The humanity that this country has to represent has been refueled by this dumbass.”
— Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction, released in April 2018.■ “WE SHOULD RIP BARRON TRUMP FROM HIS MOTHER’S ARMS AND PUT HIM IN A CAGE WITH PEDOPHILES AND SEE IF MOTHER WILL WILL STAND UP AGAINST THE GIANT ASSHOLE SHE IS MARRIED TO. 90 MILLION PEOPLE IN THE STREETS ON THE SAME WEEKEND IN THE COUNTRY. FUCK”
— June 20, 2018 tweet from actor/director Peter Fonda.■ “He’s a Nazi. He wants no judicial process. He kidnapped children and commits acts of violence for political gain and to support his racist views. He admires violent dictators. Trump is a Nazi. The debate is over. Soon we will have proof he is a Nazi supported by the Russians.”
— June 25, 2018 tweet by director Judd Apatow.■ “This is nascent fascism. We always had a turnkey totalitarian state — all we needed was an excuse and all the institutions were in place to turn this into pure fascism. If we don’t stop [President Trump] now, we will have a revolution for real. Then there will be blood in the streets.”
— Actor James Cromwell in an October 29, 2018 Variety article.
■ “I’m happy to stand with Samantha Bee tonight to support the First Amendment, the right of the President to be a relentless and unrepentant lying scumbag, the right of his supporters to not give a shit, and our right to do something about it....Impeachment or not, there will be an election. Unless Mitch McConnell can figure out a way to stop that vote, too.”
— Actor Robert De Niro at TBS’s Samantha Bee’s Not The White House Correspondents Dinner, April 27, 2019.■ “Impeachment would be just the beginning of what he deserves, you know, not even scratching the surface of what he deserves....I think we should turn him over to the Saudis, you know, his buddies. The same Saudis, you know, who got rid of that reporter [Jamal Khashoggi]. You know, maybe they could do the same for him.”
— Author Fran Lebowitz on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, May 17, 2019.
■ “I was sure that Trump was going to get elected the day he announced, and I said that he’s going to be like Hitler, and Mexicans are going to be the new Jews. And sure enough, that’s what he delivered.”
— Singer Linda Ronstadt comparing today in America under Trump to Nazi Germany, CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, December 30, 2019.■ “We’re living here in a fool’s hell. The United States of America is not a fool’s paradise; it’s a fool’s hell....Donald Trump is somewhere down here, floundering around in the muddy water at the bottom of the oligarchic pool. This is a man who has failed at fucking everything in his life except becoming the biggest tyrant and mass murderer and mass destroyer of everything that any of us might love or cherish in the whole [world], only because he has the power.”
— Former Pink Floyd band member Roger Waters in a February 12, 2020 interview with Rolling Stone magazine.■ “This is the most despicable man to ever inhabit the Oval Office. Thousands will die needlessly for his arrogance and incompetence. And if this doesn’t prove it to you, nothing will. We must remove this horror from power asap.”
— April 2, 2020 tweet by Seinfeld actor Jason Alexander.■ Howard Stern: “I would love it if Donald would get on TV and take an injection of Clorox and let’s see if his theory works. Hold a big rally, say fuck this coronavirus, with all of his followers, and let them hug each other and kiss each other and have a big rally.”
Sidekick Robin Quivers: “A big cocktail of disinfectant.”
Stern: “Yeah, and all take disinfectant and all drop dead.”
— Exchange on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM radio show, April 27, 2020.
■ “A racist President doesn’t care that Black Americans die at the hands of racist cops. An incompetent idiotic President turns his back as hundreds of thousands die of a deadly virus. On Nov. 3 we have a choice: Life or Death.”
— June 11, 2020 tweet by film director Rob Reiner.■ “You lost, you miserable self-entitled fucker. Concede and get the hell out.”
— November 8, 2020 tweet by author Stephen King.■ “This president Agent Orange will go down in history with the likes of Hitler.”
— Film director Spike Lee in a pre-recorded acceptance speech at the New York Films Critics Circle Awards, January 24, 2021.■ “The guy [Donald Trump] is a total monster….He’s such a mean, nasty, hateful person. I’d never play him as an actor because I can’t see any good in him…If he wins the election, you [Bill Maher] won’t be on this show anymore, he’ll come looking for me. They’ll be things that happened that none of us can imagine. That’s what happens in that kind of a dictatorship which is what he says, let’s believe him, take him at his word.”
— Actor Robert DeNiro on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, March 8, 2024.
■ “If that man [Donald Trump] gets in, as soon as he takes the oath, he will have generals walk down the steps of the Capitol….He will take a hammer and break the glass where the Constitution is, and he will tear it up in our faces and say, ‘Now I’m the king of the fucking world. You will bow down, bitches.’ He will punish everybody that didn’t vote for him….This motherfucker is Hitler. He didn’t come to play….That motherfucker will have us in camps.”
— ABC’s Black-ish actress Jenifer Lewis on the Sirius/XM radio show Mornings with Zerlina, April 4, 2024.■ “This is a fucking war. This is a war now, and we are fighting for our fucking country. And these assholes are gonna take it away....Take him out, Joe. If he was Hitler, and this was 1940, you’d take him out. Well, he is Hitler. And this is 1940. Take him the fuck out! Blow him up, or they’ll blow us up. Facts.”
— Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black actress Lea DeLaria in July 1, 2024 Instagram post.■ “Project 2025 is the GOP’s version of Mein Kampf. The difference is Mein Kampf is only 700 pages. Project 2025 is 900 pages, wants to control all of our lives….If Trump wins, we’re doing this show in a camp somewhere….[This election] is Trump versus democracy. It’s Trump versus freedom….It’s Trump versus us having a right to decide our future or Donald Trump and his minions in Project 2025.”
— Comedian Dean Obeidallah on MSNBC’s The ReidOut, July 2, 2024.■ Actor/musician Jack Black: “Make a wish!”...
Actor/musician Kyle Gass, before blowing out birthday cake candles: “Don’t miss Trump next time.”
— On stage exchange between Jack Black and Kyle Gass at their band Tenacious D’s July 14, 2024 performance in Sydney, Australia, just one day after a gunman shot Trump and three others at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
For more examples from our flashback series, which we call the NewsBusters Time Machine, go here.
