Donald Trump's Feelings About Robert Redford Definitely Weren't Mutual

Given his track record of going after anyone who so much as dares to criticize him, everyone expected Donald Trump to say something incredibly distasteful about the death of Oscar-winning legend Robert Redford at 89 in late 2025. After all, we all remember Trump's insensitive statement regarding Rob Reiner's murder almost immediately after news broke, where he called the late director paranoid and used the occasion to float his "Trump Derangement Syndrome" theory. So, yes, Hollywood had more than enough reason to be nervous, but then the POTUS surprised everyone by offering a genuinely warm tribute, which kind of makes sense when you consider that Trump is never one to do the thing the entire room is bracing for.

Seen leaving the White House after Redford's death, President Trump told reporters that he thought the actor was "great" and that he "had a series of years where there was nobody better. There was a period of time when he was the hottest." (per BBC)

Coming from Trump, that's high praise indeed. Mind you, this is the same person who said of decorated war hero John McCain that he preferred "people who weren't captured" and recently used the death of Rev. Jesse Jackson to remind everyone that he's not racist, actually. The generosity is even more notable since Redford hadn't exactly been shy about how he really felt about Trump, criticizing him and his policies on numerous occasions. Either Trump blissfully forgot to Google the actor before speaking, or for once the instinct to clap back simply didn't fire, a glitch in a system that otherwise runs on grievances like a car runs on gas.

Donald Trump's gracious send-off is in direct opposition to Robert Redford's actual views of him. In a 2019 op-ed published on NBC News, Redford explained how Trump's policies were like a "dictator-like attack... on everything this country stands for." Furthermore, he wrote in The Washington Post that Trump "degrades everything he touches."

The heaviest hitter of them all was the 2020 CNN op-ed, where Redford wrote that Trump operated from a "moral vacuum" and accused the president of being in this whole thing for himself. He argued that another four years would only "accelerate our slide toward autocracy" and "degrade our country beyond repair." 

Of course, Redford hasn't always been so certain about what he referred to as Trump's vicious plans to upend American democracy. When the POTUS entered the 2016 race, Redford told Larry King (via CNN) that he was glad that there was a candidate who "shakes things up" and that it was "very needed." After the election, he gave Trump the benefit of the doubt, or "thought it only fair to give the guy a chance," as he put it, per the same NBC op-ed. That grace period vanished rather quickly, because by 2018, Redford was writing on the Sundance Institute's website that he felt "out of place in the country I was born into," which is a remarkable statement coming from a man who built a showbiz career on American storytelling and democratic ideals that support it. Redford devoted his life to celebrating what America could be, but by 2025, when he died at 89, the gap between that vision and reality appeared to be growing more and more unbridgeable.