Actor Robert de Niro cursed out Fox News critics of his strident language against Donald Trump on Sunday, saying "f—" them during a CNN interview.
Reliable Sources host Brian Stelter, a vehement critic of Fox, invoked the network as being among those critical of de Niro's "f— Trump" rant at the Tony Awards in 2018.
"F— 'em," de Niro said. "F— 'em. Sorry."
Stelter admonished him for cursing on a Sunday morning, although he noted it wouldn't be an FCC violation since CNN is a cable network.
"Why do you choose to go that way?" Stelter asked.
"We are at a moment in this country where this guy is like a gangster," de Niro said. "We're in a terrible situation, and this guy just keeps going on and on and on without being stopped."
"Hmm," Stelter replied, before going to commercial.
De Niro repeatedly called Trump "crazy" during the interview and said Trump was "worse than I ever could have imagined."
"I think he's crazy in a way," de Niro said. "If it wasn't for you, CNN, MSNBC, and some other outlets ... I mean, where are we? This is a crazy world. What is going on? This guy is crazy. We've got to get him out."
Stelter, who has questioned Trump's mental health, asked de Niro if he meant "crazy" in a medical sense.
"Possibly medically, too, I'm starting to think," de Niro said. "I didn't think that before, but now I actually—when I saw him out in front of the helicopter waiting to go somewhere and talking endlessly, and sweating and sweating ... he should at least ask somebody for a handkerchief or something and dry himself off. There's just something very strange about that."
De Niro, one of the more outspoken liberal actors in Hollywood, portrayed Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Saturday Night Live last season. The show frequently depicted Mueller as closing in on Trump and his orbit and being an existential threat to his presidency.
Stelter didn't apologize for the segment, and CNN promoted the segment on its website with the headline, "Watch Robert De Niro f-bomb Fox News." CNN spokesman Matt Dornic circled a Fox News headline about the interview in a tweet and mocked the rival network as "definitely not triggered."
A Fox News spokesperson told the Free Beacon CNN should comment on why it "aired the F word live on morning TV without an apology or acknowledgment."
Definitely not triggered. pic.twitter.com/w9eFyV38DS
— Matt Dornic (@mdornic) September 29, 2019
UPDATE: Monday, 2:53 P.M.: This article was updated with the response by CNN and Fox News to de Niro's profanity.