Fox News legal editor Kerri Urbahn stated Tuesday that the Biden campaign’s tactic of using actor Robert De Niro to speak outside of the New York City courthouse while former President Donald Trump’s trial had closing arguments backfired as he was heckled after.
Urbahn appeared on “Jesse Watters Primetime” to discuss President Joe Biden’s campaign to hold a press conference outside of the NYC courthouse, to which De Niro and two officers involved in the Jan. 6 events were in attendance. Fox host Jesse Watters questioned Urbahn, as she was at the court for the trial Tuesday, on if the campaign “pulled it off.” (RELATED: ‘F*ck You!’: Trump Supporters, Robert De Niro Get Into Shouting Match Outside Courthouse)
“So here’s what it was like — we were sitting there, the energy was I think higher than it normally is,” Urbahn stated. “We’re sitting in the media bullpen, we’re looking across the street at all these Trump supporters. They’re in a good mood, they start blasting music [and] the police tell them to stop — but generally happy, upbeat. Then suddenly we get a notification in our email. The Biden campaign is one, going to have a press conference, but two there’s a special guest.”
“So now we’re thinking, ‘Oh, who’s the special guest?’ I thought maybe E. Jean Carroll, Michael Cohen — you know, it’s been a convention of characters down there,” she continued. “Then Robert De Niro walked onto the sidewalk and I’ll tell you what, he started off on a pretty frustrating note to the Trump supporters across the street because he immediately turned to all of the people who had been supporting Trump and are just kind of happily going along and saying, ‘They’re crazy, this supports crazy, [and] Trump should stop people from supporting him.’ So they all flock to the podium and then everything you saw after that is what happened.”
Watters continued to press Urbahn on the chaotic scene that unfolded between De Niro and Trump supporters, asking why she believed the campaign would use the actor after “spending the whole year distancing themselves politically from the trial.”
“Because they were desperate,” Urbahn responded. “Because Biden had a bad news cycle in the last few days, it’s a bad headline from Politico saying that Democrats are in full freak-out mode. So I’m thinking if I’m a comms person on that campaign team, what you want to do is figure out what is the shining object we can dangle over here that everyone will go running towards. I mean, think about it — you and I are talking about this right now.”
“But here’s the thing, I think it ended up backfiring because he’s calling people crazy as he’s coming off as unhinged and then they all flock to the back of his press conference cause now they’re very angry that he called them crazy at the very beginning. They’re screaming the entire time, which completely defeats the purpose of what he was doing,” she concluded.
Following De Niro’s speech to the press pool Tuesday, in which he likened Trump to a “clown” and slammed his supporters, the actor got into a shouting match with Trump supporters. Backers of the former president swarmed De Niro as he was leaving the press conference, with insults such as “Fuck you!” and “You’re a nobody!” could be heard shouting at the actor, triggering him to also yell back.
