Actor and Democratic fundraiser Robert De Niro called for President Donald Trump to be "impeached" or sent to jail quickly so that America can once again serve as a global leader on climate change.
"In my country we have an administration that totally is not being helpful," the 74-year-old actor told a crowd at the Global Citizen Forum in Montenegro on Friday.
De Niro said that the United States had lost its position as a global ambassador in the fight against global warming because "we have a leader who's not leading, that doesn't know what he's doing."
"The sooner he can be either impeached or just not, you know—I can't imagine him going for another three years, but whatever, or maybe he'll be arrested and put in jail, but whatever," added De Niro.
"We want to get back to a real world, a real place where we can help be the leaders of this."
Read more: Robert De Niro slams Trump administration's "mean-spirited" attitude to the arts
The actor was speaking on a panel with Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne and Armand Arton, the founder of the Global Citizen Forum.
De Niro is building a luxury hotel on Barbuda, which was damaged, along with 95 percent on the island, by the Category 5 Hurricane Irma. Browne said the island's 1,700 residents were evacuated to nearby Antigua.
The New York actor has pledged to assist with rebuilding Barbuda and made an appeal for assistance at a United Nations meeting on Hurricane Irma in September. De Niro said that Barbuda was an "unspoiled beauty, a paradise found" when he first visited the Caribbean island years ago and said that "Barbudans must be part" of the rebuilding process, the AP reported.
Many have attributed Irma and other major hurricanes to manmade climate change, but the Trump administration has taken a combative stance on the issue. Trump notified the U.N. in June that he intended to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement —which seeks to limit the increase in global temperatures—saying that the current deal was unfair to America and that he was elected "to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris."
De Niro said that it was "shameful" for the United States to "put a crimp" in international efforts to deal with climate change and urged citizens to continue to push back against the administration.
"I am just seeing the people push back, you can see it a lot and I hope it happens more. We've just got to get this guy out of the White House and be the leaders again, or at least part of the leaders," he said.
De Niro endorsed Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. In one pre-election video, De Niro described Trump as a "punk, a dog, a pig, a con, a bullshit artist, a mutt" and said that he would like to punch the then-Republican presidential candidate in the face.
De Niro has donated $78,200 to Democratic candidates and party-affiliated groups since 2000. He has not backed any Republicans.
Newsweek traveled to Montenegro courtesy of Global Citizen Forum.
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Conor is a staff writer for Newsweek covering Africa, with a focus on Nigeria, security and conflict.
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