In December 2006, Robert De Niro was at George Mason University promoting The Good Shepherd, a film he had directed about the founding of the CIA. During a Hardball with Chris Matthews taping, an audience member asked him who he wanted as president. He named two people: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, neither of whom had declared, with the Democratic primary between them still fourteen months away.
De Niro and Clinton have been part of the same political world since at least October 2000. The record covers a Manhattan birthday fundraiser, a shared awards ceremony in New York, a formal endorsement that came before her 2016 campaign announcement, and some of the most visible celebrity advocacy of that election. Ten years after that race, they have taken very different paths from the same starting point.
Five days ago, De Niro used the opening night of the 25th Tribeca Film Festival at the Beacon Theatre in Manhattan to tell the crowd that unnamed leaders were “trying to force us apart for their own immoral, cruel and corrupt purposes.” He has been making some version of this argument publicly since before her 2016 campaign began.
Table of Contents
Long Before the Campaign Trail
In October 2000, De Niro performed a comedy bit alongside Bill Clinton at Hillary Clinton’s 53rd birthday fundraiser at the Hudson Hotel in Manhattan. De Niro, born in Greenwich Village and a fixture of New York’s cultural scene since the 1970s, was there as a featured performer. Clinton had won her New York Senate race two weeks before the party, taking a seat in a state she had never previously lived in.
Six years later, during the December 2006 Hardball taping at George Mason University, De Niro named both Clinton and Obama before either had entered the race. He named both finalists of the 2008 Democratic primary fourteen months before the primary began.
By December 2014, the connection had been publicly formalized. On December 16, De Niro and Clinton were both honored at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights annual “Ripple of Hope” awards dinner at the New York Hilton. Clinton was recognized for her career in public service and what organizers described as a “deep commitment to human rights.” De Niro received his award from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for philanthropic work. Tony Bennett was also honored that evening. The guest list included Alec Baldwin, Mandy Patinkin, Antonio Banderas, and Sam Waterston.
De Niro’s Endorsement Came Before the Campaign
On April 2, 2015, The Daily Beast published an interview with De Niro about the 2016 presidential race. Clinton would not officially announce her candidacy for another ten days.
“I think that she’s paid her dues. There are going to be no surprises, and she has earned the right to be president and the head of the country at this point. It’s that simple. And she’s a woman, which is very important because her take on things may be what we need right now.”
His Tribeca Film Festival co-founder Jane Rosenthal gave her own view in the same interview: “She’s smart, has run things before, and knows how government works and how to get things done.”
De Niro had previously backed Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama for president. The Clinton endorsement extended a two-decade record of Democratic support, but the language was more direct and more personal than anything he had put on record about a prior candidate.
The 2016 Presidential Race
In October 2016, De Niro appeared in a produced campaign video in which he called Trump “a punk, a dog, a pig, a con” and said: “It makes me so angry that this country has gotten to this point that this bozo, this fool, has wound up where he has.”
Two days before Election Day, he accepted the Hollywood Comedy Award at the Hollywood Film Awards for a film called The Comedian and used the stage to make a final case for Clinton.
“The shadow of politics is hanging over us whether we like it or not. And it’s hard for me to think of anything else. So let me just lay it out right here. We have the opportunity to prevent a comedy from turning into a tragedy. Vote for Hillary Tuesday.”
The ceremony was hosted by James Corden, who had opened the evening by telling the audience it might be “the last awards ceremony before the apocalypse.” Leonardo DiCaprio also spoke for Clinton that night. De Niro was the only one to say her name directly and tell the room how to vote.
Clinton lost Pennsylvania by 44,292 votes and Michigan by 10,704. Trump won the presidency. Thirteen days after Clinton’s concession, President Obama awarded De Niro the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the country’s highest civilian honor, less than two weeks after the candidate he had spent eighteen months publicly backing had conceded the race.
After the Loss
Clinton published What Happened in 2017, her account of the campaign and its aftermath. The Book of Gutsy Women followed in 2019, and State of Terror, co-written with Louise Penny, arrived in 2021. In 2023, she joined Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs as a professor.
Her public remarks have continued. At Brown University in October 2025, she told students the Trump approach to politics was “quite effective in sowing mistrust and sowing divisiveness, and people get sucked into that.” At the Doha Forum the following December, she expressed concern about “a heavy emphasis on moving away from core American values.” On February 26, 2026, she gave a closed-door deposition to the House Oversight Committee about Jeffrey Epstein and said in her opening statement: “I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein.”
De Niro chose a more public path. Since 2016, his record includes:
- May 2024: Appeared outside the Manhattan courthouse alongside former Capitol Police officers during Trump’s hush money criminal trial
- May 13, 2025: Accepted the honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, presented by Leonardo DiCaprio, and told the audience: “In my country, we’re fighting like hell for the democracy we once took for granted. Art looks for truth, art embraces diversity, and that’s why art is a threat, that’s why we are a threat, to autocrats and fascists”
- October 19, 2025: Told MSNBC during No Kings Day protests: “He does not want to leave the White House; he will not leave the White House”
- February 24, 2026: Spoke at “State of the Swamp,” a Democratic counter-event to Trump’s State of the Union address, urging the crowd to “take the streets together, and we will take our country back”
- June 3, 2026: Opened the 25th Tribeca Film Festival at the Beacon Theatre, saying the festival existed because of his belief in “the power of storytelling to pull people together,” before calling unnamed leaders “monstrous” and pursuing “immoral, cruel and corrupt purposes”
Zero Day premiered on Netflix on February 20, 2025, De Niro’s first starring television role after more than fifty years in film. He plays George Mullen, a former U.S. president recalled from retirement to lead a federal investigation into a nationwide cyberattack.
Where Things Stand in 2026
The last time De Niro and Clinton shared a public stage was December 16, 2014, at the Ripple of Hope dinner in Manhattan. Mayor de Blasio handed De Niro his award that night. Tony Bennett was honored in the same ceremony. Clinton was still nineteen months from formally declaring her presidential candidacy.
She now teaches at Columbia and appears at policy forums in Washington and Doha. De Niro opens film festivals with political speeches and turns up at protests and press clubs, making variations of the same argument he has been making since before her 2016 campaign began.
