in World News Constitutional Scholar Robert De Niro Has No Clue How The Constitution Works
Actor Robert De Niro, in case you didn’t know, is also a constitutional scholar.
The “Goodfellas” star thinks President Trump will flout the Constitution because he will “likely start a war” in order to stay in the White House for 12 years.
“He’s going to be history at one point, though he’d love to be president for life,” De Niro recently told The Daily Beast. “He jokes about it. I think that if he became president for a second term, he’d try to have a third term, and let smarter people manipulate it into getting us into some kind of altercation: a war.”
The presidential historian bloviated on. “The only other president who served a third term was [Franklin D.] Roosevelt because he was in a war, and this fool would go and start something. This was what [film director] Marty Scorsese was saying, and I said, ‘Marty, I never thought of that. I never thought he’d go for a third term if there was a war or something,’” De Niro said.
CNN’s S.E. Cupp, who hosts a weekend show called “Unfiltered,” recently took to Twitter to pass along the theory that Trump will try to demand a third term.
“Remember when [New York City Mayor Michael R.] Bloomberg demanded a third term as mayor and got it?” she asked her 415,000 followers. “Trump will do the same. Beware, the same autocratic impulses “
And Trump-hating director Michael Moore said much the same thing earlier this year. (It’s interesting that the liberals who spout these conspiracy theories are all giving Trump at least another term, warning that the problems only begin when he tries to snatch a third term.)
Last June, Trump fed the fires.
“The good news is that at the end of 6 years, after America has been made GREAT again and I leave the beautiful White House (do you think the people would demand that I stay longer? KEEP AMERICA GREAT),” he tweeted.
The conspiracy theory has exploded since Trump ordered an airstrike to take out the world’s No. 1 terrorist, Qassem Soleimani, a major general in Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and commander of its Quds Force, a division responsible for extraterritorial military and clandestine operations.
De Niro, it’s worth pointing out, starred in a movie called “Wag the Dog,” about a president, seeking reelection, who faces scandal and is extricated by declaring war against Albania. The film was released a month before news of President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky broke — when Clinton initiated two anti-terrorism bombing campaigns in the subsequent year of impeachment. Some wags in the media said the embattled president was trying to “wag the dog.”
So now, with Trump mired in his own impeachment furor, speculation is swirling that he, too, is trying to wag the dog.
Even though tensions between the U.S. and Iran have quieted in the last few days, Trump is well aware of the strategy, designed to bring about a swell of national pride and a “rally ‘round the flag” effect that could help an incumbent (although the effect is usually short lived).