Donald Trump has finally responded to an attack by Robert De Niro in an awards speech last week.
The latest row between the long-feuding duo began when Mr De Niro hit out at the former president while presenting a tribute award for Celine Song’s drama Past Lives at the Gotham Awards on 27 November.
As he took to the stage and began reading from a teleprompter, the actor realised that some of his prepared remarks against Mr Trump had been omitted.
“The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out. I didn’t know about it,” he said before pulling out his phone to read the unedited version.
“The former president lied to us more than 30,000 times during his four years in office, and he’s keeping up the pace with his current campaign of retribution.
“With all of his lies, he can’t hide his soul. He attacks the weak, destroys the gifts of nature and shows his disrespect for example using Pocahontas as a slur.”
Mr Trump fired back at Mr De Niro almost a week later, taking to Truth Social on Sunday night.
“Robert De Niro, whose acting talents have greatly diminished, with his reputation now shot, must even use a teleprompter for his foul and disgusting language, so disrespectful to our Country,” he wrote.
“He has become unwatchable both in movies, and with the FOOLS that destroyed the Academy Awards, bringing them from one of the top shows in the Country to a Low Rated afterthought,” the ex-president added. “De Niro should focus on his life, which is a mess, rather than the lives of others. He has become a total loser, as the World watches, waits, and laughs!”
In his speech last week, Mr De Niro suggested he believed it was Apple, who distributed Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, who was responsible for the censoring, saying: “So I’m going to say these things – to Apple and thank them, all that. Gothams. Blah blah blah. Apple. But I don’t really feel like thanking them at all for what they did. How dare they do that, actually?”
Variety reports that the new speech was put into the teleprompter less than ten minutes before the show began. The woman who told the teleprompter operator to upload the fresh speech was overheard saying that she worked for Apple.
The teleprompter company received an email shortly before 7pm on 27 November from two members of Apple staff with the new text. Instead of specifically mentioning Mr Trump, the new speech stated how “watching the news today” shows that “we actually are living in a post-truth society”.
The magazine reported that “a source close to the film denied that there was any censorship involved and said that the incident was a miscommunication” and that both Apple and the makers of the film were unaware that the changes hadn’t been seen or approved by Mr De Niro.
Mr De Niro has regularly criticised Trump in the past, with the actor branding him “evil” and a “wannabe tough guy”.
In an 2019 interview with The Independent while promoting The Irishman, De Niro said: “Trump cares only about one thing: he wants to be the boss.
“He will be the boss no matter what it takes. If he did win the next election, there’s definitely more chance of him allowing us to get into a war, and if you’re a president in a war, it’s more likely a chance you would stay for a third term. Imagine him in a third term.”
