President Trump used his Friday-night rally in Daytona Beach to reopen one of his oldest Hollywood feuds, asking the crowd whether Robert De Niro is a moron — and then answering his own question. Yes, the President said: there is something wrong with him. Trump said he used to like some of De Niro's work but cannot even watch him now, and called the actor gross and terrible — comedies included.
De Niro has earned the attention: he has been one of the President's loudest celebrity critics for years, and he was at it again recently, attacking Trump at an anti-Trump rally. But it was what the President said next that carried the news. De Niro and a couple of the other "losers" out there, Trump told the crowd, are now all calling him — "kissing my ass" — because they want federal tax credits for film and television, and their industry is dying. His answer to Hollywood's new courtship was three words: "We'll think about it."
The courtship is real, whatever name the President gives it. Hollywood's studios and unions have been pressing Washington for a federal film and TV tax credit, arguing that without one, productions — and the American jobs that go with them, from camera crews to caterers — keep leaving for countries that offer richer incentives. An industry that spent years attacking this President is now asking his administration for help, and the President is in no hurry to give it: the credit, if it comes, will come on his terms and his timetable.
For American workers in the film towns — Los Angeles, Atlanta, New Orleans and the rest — the feud is the sideshow and the tax credit is the story: it decides whether the next production shoots at home or abroad. The President knows it, which is why the loudest insults of the night ended with the quietest sentence in Washington: we'll think about it.
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