Years after presidency, Donald Trump is still living rent-free in Robert De Niro's head

Robert De Niro (Trump) would like to talk about his new movie (Trump), "Killers of the Flower Moon" (Trump), but something keeps getting in the way.

The 80-year-old actor recently spoke to the Guardian and tried — really he did — to talk about other topics, but one former president kept popping up in conversation.

De Niro has, perhaps, become as well-known for his dislike of Donald Trump as for his many iconic film roles. For him, Trump is just a bunch of raging bull.

The actor is notorious for his lack of panache during interviews. In 2011, he sat for an interview at the Tribeca Film Festival with then-NBC News anchor Brian Williams, who asked him to talk about his parents.

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"My father was an artist; my mother was an artist who started a typing business to support us. That’s it."

But ask him about politics and the passion flows forth. In the Williams interview, which coincided with Trump's "birther" accusations regarding former President Obama, he said, "How dare you? That’s awful. Just to go out there and say things you can’t back up. That’s crazy."

The passion continued to heat up over the years.

In 2018, he earned an ovation at the Tony Awards when — before introducing a performance by Bruce Springsteen — he fit in a "F— Trump" while he had the mic.

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De Niro was among the celebrities called out during the Trump impeachment hearings in 2021. Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) took aim at "the socialists in Hollywood" who were lambasting the then-president: “Robert De Niro said he wanted to punch the president in the face."

Then this past May at the Cannes Film Festival, De Niro likened the villain he plays in "Killers of the Flower Moon" to the former president, saying that "some people did love" his cattle-rancher character, William Hale, but adding, "Look at Trump and there are people who think he could do a good job. Imagine that, how insane that is.”

De Niro's concern about the former president still hasn't waned, as the Guardian interview shows.

“It upsets me so much that somebody like him could get so far in our political system,” he told the U.K.-based outlet. “Many New Yorkers were on to what a fool he is, a joke. But when the country started buying it? I mean, he didn’t win by much. He didn’t win the popular vote. She won. ... He’s not somebody who should ever be allowed close to leadership in this country again.”

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The former president is, of course, riding high in the polls. He's on track to sweep California’s delegates for next year’s Republican convention, as The Times recently reported.

De Niro does have other things to occupy his mind, however, despite any lack of eloquence on those topics.

The actor has welcomed his seventh child, which he mentioned in passing earlier this year. The mother is his girlfriend Tiffany Chen, whom he credited with doing the "heavy lifting" with the newborn — De Niro may be an octogenarian, but she is a martial arts instructor. He told the Guardian: "[S]he does the work. And we have help."

The “Raging Bull” and “Goodfellas” star has six other children from previous relationships. With first wife Diahnne Abbott, he has daughter and actor Drena De Niro, 52, and son and actor-turned-real estate broker Raphael De Niro, 46. With ex-girlfriend, model and actor Toukie Smith came twin sons Julian and Aaron, 27, in 1995. Twenty-four-year-old Elliot and 11-year-old Helen Grace are products of his relationship with ex-wife Grace Hightower; they divorced in 2018 after being married for 20 years. He's also a grandpa several times over.

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All that family is enough to make you contemplate mortality — a situation he faces with more equanimity than the specter of another four years of President Trump.

“I have no control over it," he told the Guardian. "What am I going to do?"

De Niro's movie "Killers of the Flower Moon" will open in theaters on Friday.

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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.