Rob Schneider is used to taking punches from his Hollywood peers for being a devout MAGA Republican, but little could prepare him for Robert De Niro.
The comedic actor recounted to “Fox & Friends” Thursday an unlikely run-in he had with the Oscar-winning Trump hater during February’s “SNL50” celebration — and why he decided to steer the confrontation with love.
“It’s got to come through love, it’s true,” Schneider said of de-escalating the scene. “The Bible says you don’t get a reward for loving your brother, you get a reward for loving people who are your enemy — and he’s not my enemy. I love him, and he’s angry. And the way to to really do this and to confront this is through love. You’ve got to understand that.”
Schneider’s comments came after “Fox & Friends” played a clip of his appearance at the hotly discussed Turning Point USA event at the University of California, Berkeley on Monday. While speaking during the event, Schneider recounted how De Niro approached him on the “SNL50” stage after all alum of the show were called to participate and stand together.
“How could you support that schmuck?” De Niro demanded at the time. “Trump was a schmuck!”
“I looked right at him and I said, ‘I love you! I love you!’ Swear to God,” Schneider said of the encounter. “He looked right at me: ‘OK … OK.’ That’s the only way to handle this. We’re never going to be able to out-cancel the cancel culture. They’re better at it than us.”
Watch Schneider on “Fox & Friends” below:
The Monday night event at UC Berkeley has been at the center of a media firestorm this week after anti-Turning Point protesters demonstrated outside the sold-out event and dissenting tensions boiled over into violence.
Several arrests were made by city and university officers, and Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon have said the Department of Justice and FBI-led task force are investigating the protests.
“We were there to discuss things with kids, and we said what Charlie Kirk said — the only reason I was there at Berkeley was because I said to him, ‘Let’s go to the place that’s the most challenging,’ and he said, ‘Well, we’re going to Berkeley then.’ And it was challenging,” Schneider said of his Turning Point USA appearance and relationship with the conservative youth organization’s late founder Charlie Kirk. “But I wish it was challenging in a way that was really what this country is said to do, which is free speech.”
Watch Schneider’s full “Fox & Friends” appearance in the video above.
