Donald Trump has finally responded to an attack by Robert De Niro in an awards speech last week.
.jpg)
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 realized 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. The 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.