Stephen Miller has slammed his one-time idol Robert De Niro after the actor labeled the White House deputy chief of staff a “Nazi.”

The Hollywood icon, 82, used the insult after suggesting Donald Trump will want to cling to office when his second term ends.

“He’s set it up with, I guess he’s the Goebbels of the Cabinet, Stephen Miller,” De Niro told MSNBC on Sunday, referencing Joseph Goebbels, who was Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister in Nazi Germany.

“He’s a Nazi, yes he is, and he’s Jewish. He should be ashamed of himself,” De Niro said of Miller.

Stephen Miller attacks Robert De Niro on Fox News.screen grab

Miller, 40, got to return fire at the movie star during an appearance on Fox News’ Hannity on Wednesday, but did not directly address the “Nazi” insult.

“Robert De Niro is a sad, bitter, broken old man who is mostly enraged because he has not made a movie worth watching in at least 30 years,” Miller said, claiming the distinguished actor’s career had featured “probably the longest string of flops, failures, embarrassments.”

Miller continued, “This man has been degrading himself on camera with one horrific film after another for my entire adult life and he is not taken seriously by anybody. Not by his family, not by his friends, not by his community. He is a shell of a man and everyone disregards everything he says.”

However, a 2020 Vanity Fair profile of Miller from 2020 revealed he had framed posters of two iconic De Niro gangster films, Casino and Goodfellas, on his bedroom wall as a teenager.

People he went to school with revealed Miller would slick back his hair to look like De Niro’s Casino character Sam “Ace” Rothstein. “He’d wear like a gold mafia-style ring on his finger. It was just bizarre. Everyone commented on his weird jewelry and I think he would wear a gold chain, too, occasionally,” classmate Jenness Hartley recalled.

Miller, the driving force behind the Trump administration’s migrant deportation campaign, also once picked Casino as his favorite film. It was released in 1995—despite Miller claiming De Niro had not released a “movie worth watching” in at least 30 years.

De Niro likened Miller, who is Jewish, to Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi propaganda minister.NBC/Rosalind O’Connor/NBC via Getty

The Vanity Fair profile said Miller studied De Niro’s gestures from his mobster films to incorporate them into his own political persona.

Another classmate of Miller’s recalled, “All these conservative guys can’t help themselves, it’s such a horrible cliché but they love the mafia. The mobster is the perfect encapsulation of the conservative worldview, where there’s no real law and order apart from ‘might makes right.’”

Despite Miller’s claims, De Niro has featured in a string of acclaimed and successful films released in the last 30 years, including Heat (1995), Jackie Brown (1997), Wag the Dog (1997), Cop Land (1997), Ronin (1998), Analyze This (1999) Meet the Parents (2000), Silver Linings Playbook (2012), American Hustle (2013) Joker (2019) and The Irishman (2019).

De Niro was nominated for an Academy Award, BAFTA, SAG Award, and a Golden Globe last year for his role in Killers of the Flower Moon.

The Daily Beast has contacted De Niro’s publicist for comment.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller attends a roundtable about Antifa in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on October 8, 2025.JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images

During his interview with MSNBC’s The Weekend, De Niro, a regular critic of Trump, said the president wants to hurt America.

“Trump does not understand anything about humanity, people,” De Niro said. “He has no empathy. I don’t know where—what he is, but he’s an alien, and he wants to hurt this country.”

“It’s something deeply psychological in him, he wants to hurt people. He wants to hurt this country, doesn’t care.”