Robert De Niro has had a bone to pick with Donald Trump for a long time. The Hollywood star has been fixated on the former president ever since the 2016 election campaigns began, and that obsession has not yet died down, as another Trump-fueled rage has reportedly sent De Niro into a conniption fit.
Robert De Niro gave a speech at the Gotham Awards, a New York City film awards event, in which he claimed that the written copy of his script had been edited to remove statements regarding Donald Trump without any prior warning. Standing flustered, glancing over his notes multiple times, De Niro explained to the audience in a strange fashion that something was amiss in his speech.
During the early part of his speech, De Niro indicated that something was wrong. According to Variety, the star actor made a verbal note that something was wrong but that he would circle back at the end. So, on he went with the speech before finally making it known what he thought had happened to a part of the speech that was very important to him.
De Niro said, “I’m going to go back. I’m sorry. Okay, there was a mistake in this. I’ll keep going. Just keep scrolling.”
He then indulged in recreating the missing words. He said, “I just want to say one thing. The beginning of my speech was edited, cut out, and I didn’t know about it. And I want to read it. History isn’t history anymore. Truth is not truth. Even facts are being replaced by alternative facts, and driven by conspiracy theories and ugliness.”
Going on to explain what he means by that claim, he continued, “In Florida, young students are taught that slaves developed skills that 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 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.’”
Now on to Trump, De Niro decried, “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.”
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Now plenty around the internet are making De Niro the butt of jokes, saying that the movie star has an unstoppable obsession with Donald Trump and that he should move on to other hobbies. As De Niro seems to see it, however, his role is to use his platform to influence people on how to vote and he will continue to do that until the Donald Trump saga is finished.
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