Robert De Niro's dislike of former president Donald Trump has been well documented over the last few years.
However, the iconic actor went to great lengths to ensure that his opinion of the 45th President of the United States was not censored at an awards ceremony in New York last night.
De Niro was attending the Gotham Awards and was leading a tribute to 'Killers of the Flower Moon' when he seemed to be confused by the teleprompter.
After introducing a segment of the film that was shown to audiences, he gathered himself and said "I just wanna 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, as the audience applauded.
"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 can 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…There were great numbers of people who needed new land and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."
De Niro went on to slam Trump for his repeated lying over the course of his presidency.
'Lying has become just another tool in the charlatans’ arsenal," he continues. "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.
"Filmmakers, on the other hand — this is where I came in and I saw they edited all that."
De Niro appeared to blame Apple - who produced the film - for the way that his speech was edited, saying "I don’t feel like thanking them at all for what they did. How dare they do that actually…But now I will go to accepting the award for Killers of the Flower Moon."
Watch his speech in full below:
