A contentious presidential election is putting even celebrity friendships to the test.
According to a report from Variety, liberal actor and Hillary Clinton supporter Robert De Niro refused to take a photograph with fellow actor and former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger at a charity gala the pair attended Thursday night in Hollywood.
“Are you voting for Trump?” De Niro reportedly kept asking Schwarzenegger at the annual Friends of the Israel Defense Forces Western Regional Gala at the Beverly Hilton.
“If you’re supporting Trump, I want nothing to do with you,” the outlet quotes De Niro as saying. “If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.”
Ironically, Schwarzenegger said in a statement posted to his Twitter account last month that he would not be voting for Trump in November.
“For the first time since I became a citizen in 1983, I will not vote for the Republican candidate for President,” Schwarzenegger, who is due to take over for Trump as host of NBC’s The Apprentice next year, said in the statement. Schwarzenegger was a vocal supporter of Ohio Gov. John Kasich in the GOP primary earlier this year.
De Niro, who endorsed Clinton in April, has taken repeated aim at both Trump and his celebrity supporters in recent months.
In an outtake from a voter registration PSA he appeared in last month, the Raging Bull star called the Republican candidate a “dog,” a “pig,” a “bullsh*t artist” and a “mutt who doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjDd1QC6Vr0
“He’s an embarrassment to this country,” De Niro said of Trump. “He talks [about] how he wants to punch people in the face… I’d like to punch him in the face.”
When fellow actor and celebrity Trump supporter Jon Voight criticized the actor’s outburst in a series of messages on Twitter, De Niro called him “delusional.”
Other celebrities at Thursday night’s star-studded event reportedly included actors Gerard Butler and Julie Bowen and talk-show veteran Larry King, who told Variety the 2016 election is the “worst” he’s ever seen and that Trump had run a “terrible campaign.”
“You know what I think? Joe Biden would have won this election with 70 percent of the electorate,” King said. “But you never know how the public is going to vote. Until they go into the booth and pull the lever, you never know. I was a big supporter of Harry Truman. I was only 15. He was supposed to lose — and he won.”
Follow Daniel Nussbaum on Twitter: @dznussbaum
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