Robert De Niro to Robert Mueller: "The country needs to hear your voice"

The New York Times

De Niro is using his status playing Saturday Night Live's Robert Mueller to send a message to the former special counsel via a New York Times Op-Ed, urging him to speak out in wake of his brief press remarks this morning. De Niro wrote: "Dear Mr. Mueller, It probably hasn’t escaped your attention (in my mind, nothing escapes your attention) that I play a version of you on Saturday Night Live. As 'Robert Mueller,' my character is intimidating because he is so honest and upright. I do it for comic effect — that’s the intention anyway — but there’s also a lot of truth to it. To put it another way — it’s good-natured fun, but not entirely good-natured." De Niro adds: "As I prepared for my role on the show, I got to know you a lot better. I read about your lifetime devotion to public service and your respect for the rule of law. I watched how you presided over the special counsel’s office apparently without leaks. And you never wavered, even in the face of regular vicious attacks from the president and his surrogates." De Niro explains that while he and other Americans "admired your quiet, confident, dignified response in ignoring" attacks from President Trump, "it allowed the administration to use its own voice to control the narrative. And those voices are so loud and so persistent that they beat even reasonable people into submission." De Niro urged Mueller to speak out even though the special counsel said this morning his report "speaks for itself." De Niro pointed out that few people have actually read the 400-page document because "with all due respect, as good a read as it is, you’re no Stephen King." "The country needs to hear your voice," De Niro writes. "Your actual voice. And not just because you don’t want them to think that your actual voice sounds like Robert De Niro reading from cue cards, but because this is the report your country asked you to do, and now you must give it authority and clarity without, if I may use the term, obstruction."