Robert De Niro responds to receiving mail bomb: 'People MUST vote'

Robert De Niro is urging Americans to take political action after he (and a growing list of President Donald Trump’s detractors) received a suspicious package thought to be a pipe bomb in an apparent nationwide plot to intimidate top Democrats who’ve publicly criticized the country’s leadership.

“I thank God no one’s been hurt, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement people for protecting us,” De Niro said of the incident in a statement obtained by EW. “There’s something more powerful than bombs, and that’s your vote. People MUST vote!”

Security personnel at the actor’s Tribeca Productions, a film and television company the Oscar-winning actor co-founded in 1989, notified the New York City Police Department of a suspicious package addressed to De Niro at approximately 5:00 a.m. ET on Thursday. The NYPD bomb squad later inspected the parcel and determined it matched a photo they’d released depicting similar contraptions sent to other liberal figures earlier this week.

Between Monday and Friday morning, packages containing supposed explosive devices were sent to George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Joe Biden, CNN’s Manhattan office, Maxine Waters, Joe Biden, John Brennan, James Clapper, and Cory Booker.

De Niro has long voiced his distaste for Trump, using his platform on stage during June’s Tony Awards to lob insults at the commander in chief. The 75-year-old actor was ultimately censored by the telecast for his now-infamous comment, “F— Trump. It’s no longer ‘Down with Trump,’ it’s F— Trump.”

Trump initially responded to the acts — which New York governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio referred to as acts of “terrorism” — by calling for the nation to “unify” amid the still-unknown perpetrator’s “egregious conduct” he deemed “abhorrent to everything we hold dear and sacred as Americans.”

Shortly after making that statement, Trump criticized the media in a tweet.

“A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,” he wrote Thursday on the social media site. “It has gotten so bad and hateful that it is beyond description. Mainstream Media must clean up its act, FAST!”

Related content:

• Suspicious package sent to Robert De Niro amid string of pipe bomb mailers
• Late-night hosts slam Trump’s response to pipe bomb threats
• Robert De Niro gets censored for saying ‘F— Trump’ at Tony Awards