The claim: Elon Musk banned ‘woke’ Robert DeNiro from X platform

An Aug. 17 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows an image of actor Robert De Niro.

“Breaking: Elon Musk Permanently Bans Robert De Niro From Platform X, ‘I Don’t Want His Woke Presence On X,’” reads on-screen text included in the post.

The post received more than 3,000 likes in four days.

Our rating: False

De Niro does not use social media and has no connection to a suspended X account using his name, his publicist said. The claim originated months earlier from an account that posts satirical content.

‘De Niro is not on social media, period’

De Niro, a two-time Academy Award winner, is a longtime critic of former President Donald Trump. During an interview with MSNBC in May, he compared a second Trump presidential term to the reigns of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Musk – who owns the X platform and supports Trump – responded by saying the comparison makes no sense.

But the claim that Musk banned the De Niro from the platform is false, according to the actor’s publicist, who said he is “not on social media.”

A screenshot of a suspended profile purportedly belonging to De Niro circulated on X in August. But Stan Rosenfield, the actor’s publicist, told USA TODAY the 81-year-old actor has no connection to that account and does not use social media.

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A separate X account claiming to be De Niro’s official account remains active but has not posted in more than a decade, sharing its only post in May 2014. When presented with a link to that account, Rosenfield responded, “I think you are safe to say that De Niro is not on social media, period.”

The text in the Instagram image – which includes a quote purportedly from Musk – is nearly identical to the text in an image posted to Facebook on June 6 by The Patriots Lovers, a self-described satire and humor account affiliated with the satirical SpaceXMania website. The only difference is the addition of the word “breaking” to the version shared to Instagram.

The publisher of the account, Tim Lawson, confirmed to USA TODAY that the post is fabricated. Both the image posted to Facebook and its caption make clear they are satire.

The Instagram post is an example of what could be called “stolen satire,” where posts written as satire and presented that way originally are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.

USA TODAY previously debunked a false claim that a video showed De Niro shouting at anti-Israel protesters.

The Instagram user who shared the post could not be reached. USA TODAY reached out to X for comment but did not immediately receive a response that addressed the claim.

Our fact-check sources:

Stan Rosenfield, Aug. 19, Email exchange with USA TODAY
Tim Lawson, Aug. 19, Facebook message exchange with USA TODAY
The Patriots Lovers, June 6, Facebook post
The Patriots Lovers, accessed Aug. 20, Facebook profile

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