- Robert De Niro said on stage that part of his Gotham Awards speech was cut without his permission.
- De Niro read his remarks anyway, which condemned former President Donald Trump.
A fuming Robert De Niro went off script during his speech at Monday night's Gotham Awards, claiming that some of his remarks, which condemned former President Donald Trump, were cut out without his permission.
The 80-year-old Oscar-winning actor was presenting a tribute award for Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" film, which he co-stars in, when he said to the crowd at New York City's Cipriani Wall Street that a part of his speech was edited out from the teleprompter he was reading from.
Reps for Apple and the Gotham Awards did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday from Business Insider.
"I just want to say one thing. The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out. I didn't know about it. And I want to read it," De Niro said to a round of applause before he turned to his cell phone to read the section he alleged was slashed.
It began, "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 develop skills which could be applied for their personal benefit. The entertainment industry isn't immune to this festering disease," De Niro said.
The "Goodfellas" actor continued, "Lying has become just another tool in the charlatan's arsenal" before he went after Trump, the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
"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," De Niro said. "But with all his lies, he can't hide his soul."
De Niro, a longtime Trump foe, said that the former president "attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect, for example, by using 'Pocahontas' as a slur."
As De Niro continued, he told the crowd, "This is where I came in, and I saw that they edited all that" as the audience cheered.
De Niro added that he was going to thank Apple, which produced "Killers of the Flower Moon," and the organizers of the Gotham Awards during his speech, but said, "I don't feel like thanking them at all for what they did."
"How dare they do that, actually," De Niro said, suggesting that they were behind cutting his speech.