Actor Robert De Niro: Trump must be ‘held accountable’ with impeachment inquiry

Award-winning actor Robert De Niro slammed President Trump, saying, among other criticisms, that the president has to be “held accountable” with the impeachment inquiry.

“If we don’t go through this impeachment inquiry, we’re letting him get away with something,” De Niro told MSNBC’s Joy Reid Saturday morning. 

“He has done something wrong, he has to pay for that. He has to be held accountable.”

{mosads}De Niro, a consistent critic of Trump, also told Reid that Trump lacks “sympathy or empathy for anything or anybody,” calling Trump a “fake president.”

“He calls everything else fake because he knows he’s fake,” the 76-year-old actor said.

 Trump, De Niro continued, has hurt the U.S.’s relationships with a lot of countries and the country needs a president that can repair “the damage that has been done.”

Specifically, De Niro said that he believed that 2020 hopeful Pete Buttigieg could do this.  

“He’s young, but he’s got all of the qualifications,” De Niro told Reid.

The veteran actor also mentioned Michael Bloomberg as someone who he thinks could do the job.

“He’s a grown-up, he’s run [New York] for three terms,” De Niro said of Bloomberg, adding that “he hasn’t done everything perfectly, but he’s very, very good.”

Bloomberg hasn’t officially launched a presidential campaign, but Friday he filed to be on Alabama’s Democratic primary ballot. 

Buttigieg has seen a recent surge in the polls and is currently polling at 17.5 percent in Iowa, according to RCP’s average of polls.