Actor Robert De Niro is accusing Gotham Awards organizers of censoring parts of his speech that discussed former President Donald Trump.
Robert De Niro was invited on Monday evening to accept an award on behalf of the team of Martin Scorsese’s film “The American Note.” When he read the teleprompter on stage, he discovered that the gala organizers had removed certain sections of his speech dedicated to Donald Trump.
Furious, the legendary 80-year-old actor took out his cell phone to read the original version of the text he had prepared.
“The beginning of my speech was changed and I wasn’t aware of it, so I want to read it,” he said, before calling Trump a “charlatan.”
“The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in power and he continues to do so at the same rate in his current campaign,” denounced the actor from “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas.”
The actor also accused Trump of “attacking the weak” and “destroying the gifts of nature.”
At the end of his speech, Robert De Niro did not hesitate to throw an arrow at Apple (which distributes the film) and the organizers of the Gotham Awards, a ceremony honoring the best independent films.
“I was planning on thanking Apple and the Gotham Awards, but after what they just did, I don’t feel like it anymore,” he concluded.