“But then actors and musicians started to ruin it for me. They started speaking. Shouting. Ranting. Not about acting, not about music, but about politics. … It is also their tone — unfailingly arrogant, invariably patronizing. They believe they have cornered the market on wisdom and experience, not just in the entertainment world but in the entire world.” —Laura Ingraham, Shut Up & Sing, 2003

Things haven’t changed much in two decades, have they? Today, as yesterday, entertainment elites think they know better than us, and, more than anything else, they want to tell us how to vote. This is sad because it often tarnishes our view of what they do so well, which is usually one of two things: singing or acting.

Take Robert De Niro, for example. From “Taxi Driver” to “Raging Bull” to “Goodfellas” to “Heat” to “The Irishman,” his body of work is spectacular. Even his comedic stuff, from “Midnight Run” to “Meet the Parents,” is a hoot.

And yet the guy is a vile, foul-mouthed, 80-year-old Trump-deranged lunatic.

De Niro’s white-hot hatred of the former and perhaps future president isn’t something new, either. He’s been profanely expressing his desire to “punch” Trump “in the face” for years now. He might need a step stool to do it, of course, but still. One wonders if maybe, back in the day, Trump sauntered into Tribeca and sauntered out with De Niro’s girl or something. Anyway.

“I don’t understand why people are not taking him seriously,” De Niro whined to the girls on “The View” on Tuesday, “because you read about it historically in other countries that they didn’t take the people seriously. Think of [wait for it!] Hitler and Mussolini. They were fools and clowns. Well, and I hear, some people — I mean, who does not think that this guy is going to do exactly what he says he’s going to do? He’s done it already.”

Indeed, Trump has done it already. He was president for four years, during which time his “America First” foreign and domestic policies brought us enviable economic prosperity and kept us out of ruinous wars.

The Hitler stuff is so pathetic and so tiresome, but it’s ultimately revealing because it’s such a laughable leap. Just for grins, then-National Review’s Kyle Smith took the bait back in 2017, when an unfortunately named New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, intoned, “Trump is no Hitler, but the way he has manipulated the American people with outrageous lies, stacked one on top of the other, has an eerie historical resonance.” Said Smith in response:

As far as I’m concerned, what Blow has accomplished is not unlike the discovery of penicillin, or the theory of relativity. It is certainly, as he says, completely unheard-of — a “shock,” as he puts it — to hear someone compare Trump to Hitler. The intellectual history of our age must henceforth be divided into the period before and after Blow built the conceptual framework connecting Hitler to Trump for the very first time.

Adolf Hitler, of course, murdered six million Jews and countless other millions during the catastrophic world war he started, while Trump’s nearest crime was to make a Trumpian observation about the loyalty of his base: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters.”

But just for good measure, Smith ran some additional numbers: “HITLER: Invaded the sovereign states of Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Free State of Danzig, Denmark, France, Guernsey, Hungary, Italy, Jersey, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, San Marino, the Soviet Union, and Yugoslavia. TRUMP: Has invaded no sovereign states. HITLER: Started a world war that killed more than 5 million in his armed forces alone, plus many millions more in other countries. TRUMP: Has started no world wars.”

“It’s going to happen,” continued De Niro. “If he gets elected, it’s going to change this country for everybody, and they might think that it’s going to make their life better or just want, excuse my French …” At this point, the show’s producers mute the audio, De Niro goes on an expletive-laden rant, the “View” girls get all giddy, and the star-struck audience cheers.

As Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld quipped last night: “Will someone please show Bob a doll and have him point to the place where Trump hurt him? We’re gonna have civil strife? Under Joe Biden, Jews can’t go to class, and illegals are attacking cops and getting away with it.”

If only someone on “The View” had asked De Niro to critique the Biden presidency so far on matters such as illegal immigration, crime, Jew-hatred, inflation, China, and the Mexican cartels teaming up to kill 70,000 Americans per year with fentanyl. Stuff like that.

As for De Niro’s profanity, and as for the Left’s lack of decorum and decency, those in the media and on the Left — but I repeat myself — will dismiss it while decrying the virality of, for example, the “Let’s go Brandon” chant. But the latter was not only organic, it was actually funny. De Niro’s outburst, on the other hand, was dire and deadly serious, and with a hint of murderous intent, as have been other similar outbursts from his fellow Hollywood elites, from Kathy Griffin to Madonna to Johnny Depp.

Of course, there’s also Joe Biden’s oft-expressed high school fantasy, in which he takes Trump “behind the gym” to “beat the hell out of him.” Never mind that these days, ol’ Scranton Joey would be bowled over by a stiff wind.

And let’s not forget Barack Obama, who, at a campaign event, once looked at a well-built attendee and pondered how fun it would be to turn him loose on Fox News’s Sean Hannity. And who once told his fellow Democrats that when it comes to dealing with Republicans, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”

Spare us the indignation, then, and get a grip on yourselves — before some unhinged individual takes your calls to violence seriously.