I’ll give Robert De Niro this: He’s honest about his pathology. He comes right out and admits it:

“The phrase, ‘We all love our country,’ stuck in my throat,” he confessed to a crowd of wealthy leftist fellow travelers on Sunday in New York City. “Because our country isn’t so lovable right now. I hate to say it, but loving our country is starting to sound like an abused spouse saying they love their abuser.”

He didn’t hate to say that. He absolutely loved saying it. He was among friends, basking in their adoration. But whatever.

“I can’t love a country,” he continued, “that starts stupid and inhumane wars, killing thousands of innocents and indirectly causing the deaths and suffering of millions more. … I can’t love a country that sends out masked militias to shoot citizens in the streets, torture our neighbors, and separate families. I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, xenophobic tyrant. And let me, let me just say it: I can’t love the country that’s led by Donald Trump and his, and his sycophant Congress.”

Robert De Niro speaking at yesterday’s Rise Up, Sing Out event:

“I can’t love a country that’s led by a racist, misogynist, and xenophobic tyrant. Let me just say it. I can’t love a country that’s led by Donald Trump and his sycophant Congress.”
pic.twitter.com/NPv6N8xFH2

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) June 15, 2026

It’s odd but not unexpected for a wealthy, washed-up, unhinged leftist to compare the country that’s been so good to him to an abusive spouse, but perhaps that’s just De Niro’s narcissism coming out. Perhaps it’s just a primal scream as he ages up and out, while a certain fellow New York octogenarian is at the height of his power and relevance as the leader of the Free World.

The De Niro-dominated event was dubbed “Rise Up, Sing Out,” and it was meant as cope, as comfort food for well-heeled Democrats who couldn’t stand the prospect of patriotic Americans of every color and creed celebrating the nation they love at a UFC event on the South Lawn of the People’s House.

I mention all this because De Niro’s America-hatred isn’t happening in a Hollywood vacuum. According to a new survey, it’s spreading like a disease across our country.

“Americans have a bleak outlook on the nation’s future ahead of its 250th birthday next month,” reports NBC News’s Jonathan Allen, “with most saying the U.S. has already seen its best days and a record-low number saying they are extremely proud to be Americans.”

The survey of 3,000 U.S. adults found that they “have little faith in their institutions — including the federal government, the media and the high-tech industry.” (Wow. Who knew we didn’t trust the mainstream media?)

According to the poll, 78% say the American Dream is further out of reach, 16% say its reachability is about the same, and just 5% say the American Dream is now more reachable than ever.

NBC’s Allen, who disingenuously suggests that Donald Trump and JD Vance are the Right’s version of the Left’s Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, says the poll “reveals a polity deeply divided along partisan, generational, educational and class lines, but mostly united in its certainty that the ‘American Dream’ is harder to attain now than it was a generation ago.”

Too bad the pollsters didn’t sample any of the 4,000 SpaceX employees who became instant millionaires the other day, thanks to the entrepreneurial genius of the world’s first trillionaire, that irrepressible African-American immigrant named Elon Musk. One guy, a guy who seemed to be a Hispanic immigrant, took a $28-an-hour welding job at SpaceX in 2015, and he woke up the other day $900,000 richer. “I was always taught to just work hard,” he told Fox News, “and do the best at what you can do.”

If you’re an American, how on earth can you not be thrilled for this guy and his family? Sadly, though, if you’re a Democrat millionaire like class-warrior Elizabeth “Honest Injun” Warren, you’re probably melting down and chewing glass at the news of this guy’s good fortune.

Sadly, it’s not just one poll, and our young people are most afflicted. According to a recent Quinnipiac poll, the younger folks are, the less likely they are to answer affirmatively to whether they’re proud to be an American. A lot less likely.

It’s no coincidence. As the New York Post editorial board points out, “Starting in the late 1960s, the left has come to dominate America’s universities and K-12 curricula, too, emphasizing the country’s imperfections without the important context of what every other nation has managed to achieve.”

Folks, if you can’t love your country now — on the cusp of its 250th birthday, with its unparalleled beauty, its roaring stock market, its mighty military, and World Cup visitors from all around the world professing their love for her — then, well, you might just be a Democrat.