Robert De Niro tried but… couldn’t help it refer to Donald Trump, whom he compared to the Machiavellian hero he embodies in the film “Killers of the Flower Moon” by Martin Scorsese.

In the film, which premiered Saturday at the Cannes Film Festival, the 79-year-old actor plays William Hale, the so-called “king,” a businessman who hatches a dastardly scheme to deprive a tribe of Oklahoma natives of oil revenue in the 1990s. 1920. The script was based on real events. Hale relies on the naive Ernest Burkart (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) to carry out his plan.

“I don’t understand why he betrayed” the Osage tribe, the actor explained, about the fact that his hero built a relationship of trust with the natives and then planned dozens of murders. “But we understood it much better after the death of George Floyd, with systemic racism,” he added, referring to the 2020 killing of the African-American man who died of suffocation after a white police officer knelt on his neck for nearly 9 minutes.

“This is the banality of evil, what we have to watch out for. We all know who I’m talking about, I won’t say his name,” said De Niro, one of Trump’s best-known opponents. A few minutes later, however, he didn’t hold back: “It’s like with Trump, I have to say. There are people who think he can do a good job. Imagine how crazy that is.”

Scorsese himself said that the more he learned about the Osage, the more he wanted to include in his nearly four-hour film. “I wanted to know everything about the Osage and it was mind-blowing,” he commented.

Osage Nation Chief Standing Bear emphasized that Scorsese restored trust. “My people suffered terribly. To this day, these consequences follow us. But I can say, on behalf of the Osage, that Scorsese and his team have restored that trust, and we know they won’t betray it,” he told reporters.