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Comedian Rob Schneider defended free speech during a Turning Point USA event at UC Berkeley. While speaking to students, he recalled a tense but civil exchange with fellow actor Robert De Niro – a memory he says shows the power of responding with love instead of anger.
Schneider’s call for “loving people who are your enemy” followed brawls outside the venue, where protesters fought near the conservative student gathering. He said he was told protesters used tear gas and tried to mimic gunfire.
“These people, preventing people from talking and preventing people from getting in, these were the ‘anti-fascists,’” said Schneider on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday.
“The Turning Point USA students from Berkeley wanting to have peaceful discourse, peaceful debate, conversations, talking about how much they love God, family and country… these people were called the fascists,” he added.
ROB SCHNEIDER WANTS MESSY CONVERSATIONS
Comedian Rob Schneider speaks during a Turning Point USA event at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California, on Monday. (Carlos Avila Gonzalez/San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images)
“Who are the real fascists there?”
The event was part of TPUSA’s “This Is The Turning Point Tour” and comes just two months after the group’s founder Charlie Kirk was murdered during a campus event in Utah on Sept. 10.
Agitators gathered outside the event, where two men engaged in a bloody brawl. The Berkeley Police Department told Fox News Digital there were arrests at the event.
BIRTHPLACE OF FREE SPEECH — NOW GROUND ZERO FOR CENSORSHIP
Inside the venue, Schneider told students about a surprising moment with one of Hollywood’s most outspoken critics of President Donald Trump. He said that, at an event, he was pushed into actor Robert De Niro, who holds starkly different political beliefs from his own.
Rob Schneider revealed that when Robert De Niro confronted him about his support for President Donald Trump, he chose to respond with love rather than anger. (Taylor Hill/FilmMagic/Getty Images; Jakub Porzycki/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“De Niro turns around, and he’s like, ‘Schneider, how could you support that schmuck?’” he recalled on stage, the actor referring to Trump.
“I looked right at him and said, ‘I love you. I love you,’” said Schneider.
“I swear to God, he looked right at me and went, ‘Okay, okay.’ That’s the only way to handle this. We’re never [going to] be able to out-cancel the cancel culture. They’re better at it than us. It’s gotta be through love.”
Schneider said that message of responding to hate with love and respect is the only way to ease rising political tensions.
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“We have to meet them in some other way than just with the same kind of anger,” Schneider told Fox News’ Ainsley Earhardt.
“When you come from a place of love and brotherhood… it doesn’t advance to that next ugly place,” he added.
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