Robert De Niro has more than a few opinions about former President Donald Trump, and he’s not one to be quiet about it. For the last decade, De Niro’s public appearances have been punctuated with criticisms of Trump. Why, just last month, he called him a “wannabe tough guy with no morals or ethics.” So when given the podium at tonight’s Gotham Awards, it seemed like a good opportunity for De Niro to, once again, tell us how he really feels. Someone, Mr. De Niro believes, didn’t agree.
During a tribute to Martin Scorsese’s Killers Of The Flower Moon, De Niro noted that part of his speech was missing from the teleprompter. Per Vulture, De Niro stammered in his reading, attempting to find his place. The show cut away from De Niro to present a montage of clips from the film before returning to the actor, who claimed his speech had been edited. “The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out. I didn’t know about it,” he said. The A.V. Club has reached out to the Gotham Awards for comment.
Luckily, De Niro had a copy of the speech on his phone and read it anyway. It reads:
“History isn’t history anymore. Truth is not truth; even facts are being replaced by alternative facts and driven by conspiracy theories and ugliness. In Florida, young students are taught that slaves developed skills which could be applied for their personal benefit. The entertainment industry isn’t immune to this festering disease. ‘The Duke’ John Wayne famously said of Native Americans, ‘I don’t feel we’ve did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.’ Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan’s arsenal. The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office and he’s keeping up the pace in his current campaign of retribution. But with all of his lies he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, he destroys the gifts of nature, and shows disrespect; for example, by using Pocahontas as a slur.”
After his speech was met with applause, he accused Apple and/or the Gotham Awards of editing his speech without his knowledge. “This is where I came in and saw they edited all that,” he said. “I don’t feel like thanking [Apple or the Gotham Awards] at all for what they did. How dare they do that, actually.”