https://reason.com/blog/2018/06/11/deniro-has-tony-tantrum-over-trump 

I am no foe of celebrity activism per se, nor a strict subscriber to "there's a time and a place for politics" rules. (Some things are too important for convention or civility.) And I am no fan of our current president, his administration, his aesthetic style, or his policies. "#badword# Trump" is not a sentiment I stand against on principle.

But what De Niro did last night was not productive activism, and his was absolutely the wrong time and place for it. This is not a man who has only periodic access to the televised spotlight, as in the case of, say, some NFL football players. This was not a situation where De Niro's message counteracted another prevailing message at the event in question. And it was not as if De Niro was using his massive platform to persuade, to draw attention to an overlooked issue, to advocate for anything in particular.

Instead, De Niro's self-satisfied, virtue-signaling, substance-free outburst only served to make him and other Hollywood liberals feel good about themselves, give Trump supporters fodder for their persecution fantasies, steal the spotlight from theater at an award show supposedly dedicated to honoring it, and further convince a whole lot of ordinary Americans that there is no respite from red/blue divisions. In other words, it showed that De Niro is a lot more like Donald Trump than the actor thinks.