Ahead of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, actor Robert De Niro swung by CBS Mornings on Wednesday to promote his new film, Tribeca 25, and stress the importance of educating young people about that day. That would be perfectly reasonable if not for the fact that De Niro also sought to compare 9/11 to the current “political situation.”
Co-anchor Gayle King wondered, “Bob, who do you hope will watch the documentary because I think it's important we keep telling the story because it breaks my heart that people don't fully grasp how devastating that was.”
DERANGED: Robert DeNiro compares life immediately after 9/11 to right now living under a second Trump term...
“It’s also because kids, and my kids, my — my teenage daughter, doesn't really — she doesn’t [understand], but it just shows how, if you don't remind people what… pic.twitter.com/SwTGYl4k1t— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) September 9, 2026
De Niro began reasonably enough, “Well, yes, it's also because kids and my kids, my teenage daughter doesn't really. It just shows, if you don't remind people what happened so recently they’re gonna forget.”
However, De Niro then went off the deep end as he appeared to analogize the need to remember 9/11 with the need to learn from the Trump Era, “We're in that situation right now with the whole political situation because people forget what happened.”
De Niro did not say the words “Donald Trump,” but knowing De Niro’s anti-Trump politics it would be reasonable to assume that is what he meant because De Niro has compared Trump to 9/11 before. After Trump’s first victory back in 2016, De Niro told The Hollywood Reporter that "I feel like I did after 9/11.”
It is perfectly appropriate to want to educate young people about a terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people that occurred before they were born, but to compare it to a president you don’t like is obscene.
Here is a transcript for the September 9 show:
CBS Mornings
9/9/2026
9:52 AM ET
GAYLE KING: Bob, who do you hope will watch the documentary because I think it's important we keep telling the story because it breaks my heart that people don't fully grasp how devastating that was.
ROBERT DE NIRO: Well, yes, it's also because kids and my kids, my teenage daughter doesn't really. It just shows, if you don't remind people what happened so recently—
KING: Yes!
DE NIRO: —they’re gonna forget. Generations—that we're in that situation right now—
KING: Yeah!
DE NIRO: —with the whole political situation because people forget what happened.
KING: Yeah. But that's why this is such an important reminder.
