Robert De Niro says: F--k Trump0:28

“I’M GOING to say one thing. F**k Trump.”

Really?

That’s what actor Robert De Niro said at Sunday’s Tony Awards to a standing ovation from his fellow Hollywood entertainers.

Scenes like these are becoming eerily familiar in 2018. And if they keep happening, the President should get comfortable in the Oval Office.

Award shows have become political theatre consisting of celebrities expressing their moral outrage to whatever Donald Trump did that day.

Whether you agree with De Niro or not, you can’t deny that statements such as “F**k Trump” are extremely ineffective. De Niro thinks he’s helping the anti-Trump cause. He’s not.

If anything, celebrity outrage probably adds to the President’s appeal.

At the Grammys this year, Trevor Noah, Bono, Logic and Kesha used their stage time to push various predictable political messages. The result? Grammys ratings dropped by 24 per cent.

Unsurprisingly, people tune out when millionaire celebrities utter cheap, hollow political lectures to crowds of other millionaire celebrities, hysterically clapping like overexcited seals at the zoo.

At last year’s Grammys, Jennifer Lopez said: “At this particular point in history, our voices are needed more than ever.” Days after the 2016 election, the absurdity of this statement seemed obvious. But we’ve already forgotten why people voted for Mr Trump in the first place.

People voted for him because of his outsider status. The establishment hates him. The media hates him. Hollywood hates him. People voted for him, and will vote for him, because of liberal elites’ hared for him — not despite of it.

The President’s supporters are undeterred by celebrity outrage. It’s actually the reason they supported him in the first place.

Seeing celebrities parrot the message of the Democratic Party only confirms the average Trump voter’s suspicion: that the Democrats have abandoned their roots as the party of the working class and have been taken over by wealthy, well-connected coastal elites.

Hollywood celebrities mindlessly repeating Democratic talking points does nothing to alleviate concerns about the political establishment. In fact, it amplifies them.

Hollywood entertainers preaching to the choir only deepens the divide between Mr Trump’s Middle America and Hillary Clinton’s coastal America.

I recently read JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, a book praised for its insight into the white working class’s support for Mr Trump. Vance has been called the “Trump whisperer”. A movie about his life is now in the works.

A bona fide hillbilly himself, Vance eloquently describes the problems facing communities like his in Middle America.

In an interview with the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics, Vance sums up why the white working class (a historically safe Democratic voting bloc) voted for Mr Trump: “In style and tone, [Trump] was a massive middle finger to the entire elite system that people feel has screwed them.”

Millions of Americans turned their back on a system they believed wasn’t working for them. A system they thought didn’t care about the long list of issues facing Middle America, such as the opioid epidemic, globalisation, job losses, income inequality and crony capitalism.

This system appeared to care more about the personal imperfections of the President than the actual issues facing America. So when Americans see celebrities whinging about the one dude they think is helping them, they see out-of-touch millionaires who don’t know a thing about the real problems facing America.

Whether he is actually helping them is another question. If you think he’s not, as I do, convince his supporters of that using evidence. Don’t just yell “F**k Trump” into a microphone to crowds of people who agree with you. That’s too easy.

Mr Trump’s personal flaws were obvious. You don’t have to be a genius to notice them. He’s egotistical, uninformed and he thinks he’s God’s gift to women. The fact that he actually responded to De Niro on Twitter shows how petty and insecure he is.

But his supporters don’t care because they have bigger problems to worry about; problems that actually affect them and not some outraged millionaire entertainer.

Americans knew about Trump’s obvious imperfections, but voted for him anyway. Doesn’t that tell you everything you need to know? Any effort to unseat the President can’t be centred on tearful expressions of moral outrage about him.

Americans want to see someone getting their hands dirty, speaking honestly about the economic and social problems facing their communities. Nobody wants to see public servants mingling with the rich and famous. And cringe-worthy political diatribes from millionaire celebrities is only evidence of that.

“I supported Trump, but then I watched the Oscars,” is a sentence no one has ever said, or ever will say. So if celebrities aren’t changing any minds, they should stop. And if they’re actually damaging their own cause, they should definitely stop.

The President’s supporters don’t care about celebrity outrage. They didn’t during the election, they don’t now and they won’t in 2020. If they did, he wouldn’t have won.

And yet, celebrities unbelievably keep going. They even play the victim. At last year’s Golden Globes, Meryl Streep called Hollywood “one of the most vilified segments in American society” — she said after coming from her California mansion.

Celebrities have every right to express their opinion. Entertainers just like everyone else are allowed to engage in politics. But sometimes, doing so only hurts the causes they claim to champion.

It looks like celebrities are doing everything they can to ensure Trump’s re-election.

Follow Luke Kinsella on Twitter @luke_kinsella

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