Robert De Niro has said he would be keen to play New York state governor Andrew Cuomo in a future movie about the coronavirus epidemic, as the actor made another blistering attack on Donald Trump.

Appearing on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, De Niro expressed his admiration for Cuomo, saying: “He’s doing what a president should do.” He added: “I could see [a President Cuomo]. I am for Biden, and want everything to go well for Biden, but at least we have a person who is very capable, a very capable backup, if you will … he’s doing a great job, he’s doing what any president should do.”

Referring to Trump as “the idiot”, De Niro went on to say: “We of course could have survived this [pandemic] much better if the idiot had done the right thing, listened and heeded all the warnings, there were many, many warnings, and we are all paying for it now. It would have been bad in some ways, but never like this.”

Describing the government response to the pandemic as “appalling”, De Niro said: “Everybody knows what [Trump’s] game is, it’s all about him getting re-elected.”

He added: “It’s crazy, I have no words for it any more … and what’s scarier about it all is that the Republicans and his enablers around him are not doing anything. They are around a crazy person and they don’t do anything. They are not standing up to him. As an actor, I say this is like Shakespeare. No one has the balls to stand up to this guy. They all have a platform … they’re just not doing anything. What could be worth it for them, to sacrifice their souls to make this deal with the devil to work with this guy? It’s crazy.”

De Niro has been one of Trump’s most vocal critics since before the presidential election, describing him at various times as “totally nuts”, a “bullshit artist”, a “wannabe gangster” and a “real racist”. In 2019, De Niro told the Guardian: “I can’t wait to see him in jail. I don’t want him to die, I want him to go to jail.”

Cuomo said he approved of the idea during an appearance on the Late Show the following day, telling Colbert: “Oh, boy, that’d be a treat. I’m a big De Niro fan. He’s a genius.”