Robert DeNiro has doubled down on his long-standing feud with Donald Trump by claiming the US President “doesn’t care” how many people die from coronavirus.

The screen icon, who is one of Trump’s most consistent critics, attacked his handling of the crisis in a new interview with BBC Newsnight.

It came as the US death toll reached a staggering 82,653 – higher than any other country in the world.

He described Trump’s administration as “Shakespearean” and said “you’ve got a lunatic saying things that people are trying to dance around”.

DeNiro added: “It’s appalling, it’s appalling. He wants to be re-elected, he doesn’t even care how many people die.”

“It’s like Shakespearean the whole thing” – actor Robert de Niro on how the coronavirus outbreak is being handled in the US#Newsnight pic.twitter.com/k64t3Mhcl9

— BBC Newsnight (@BBCNewsnight) May 12, 2020

When challenged by host Emily Maitlis, who said Trump’s fanbase would disagree with the criticism, he said: “No, he doesn’t care for those people. And the people who he pretends to care about are the people he has the most disdain for because he could care less about them.
“They might like to tell themselves or delude themselves, but he doesn’t care about them.”

Opening up on life in New York, the hardest-hit US state, he said: “It’s been very strange because New York is kind of like a ghost town, it’s surreal then you see other parts of the world, other great big cities of the world, are also in the same situation.
“It’s interesting, it’s kind of like a science fiction movie but it’s real.”

DeNiro’s latest criticism comes after he laid into the President during a 2019 interview with Michael Moore.

“I’d like to see a bag of shit right in his face – hit him right in the face like that and let the picture go all over the world,” he said. “And that would be the most humiliating thing because he needs to be humiliated.”