Robert De Niro has claimed his speech at the Gotham Awards in New York was censored without his knowledge to remove negative comments about Donald Trump.
The 33rd annual ceremony took place at Cipriani Wall Street, where the actor appeared on stage to honour US filmmaker Martin Scorsese.
During the live ceremony, Robert appeared to struggle reading the autocue before noting there was a “mistake”.
At last night’s Gotham Awards in New York, Robert De Niro realised that the opening part of the speech he was to give had been cut by Apple & the Gotham Awards people – so he went to his phone for the original unedited speech and started again. ✊🏻 pic.twitter.com/7aaCocpkEc
— Michael Warburton (@MichaelWarbur17) November 28, 2023
The 80-year-old proceeded to tell the audience that the first part of his speech had been removed from the prompter.
“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,” he said, before taking out his phone to read his original speech in full.
Robert continued: “History isn’t history anymore. Truth is not truth, even facts are being replaced by alternative facts and driven by conspiracy theories and ugliness… 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 his lies, he can’t hide his soul.
“He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows disrespect for example by using Pocahontas as a slur,” referencing the former US President’s nickname for Senator Elizabeth Warren.
“This is where I came in and I saw that they edited all that.”
