No, Elon Musk did not ban actor Robert De Niro from X

Actor Robert De Niro has been a vocal critic of President-elect Donald Trump. But despite social media users’ claims, X owner Elon Musk didn’t boot the "Taxi Driver" actor off X.

"Elon Musk permanently bans Robert De Niro from X, declares "no room for his woke presence," a Nov. 13 Facebook post with photos of Musk and De Niro reads.

This Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

The post’s comments include a link to a Nov. 13 story with the same headline on a website called NewsEdge, which appears to primarily share sports related news. A similar headline and story were published June 6 with a satire label on the website SpaceXMania, which has a disclaimer that says, "We want to emphasize that nothing on this website is real!" The Facebook post reshared the story headline without that label.

Musk criticized De Niro in May after the actor compared Trump to Nazi Germany’s leader Adolf Hitler in an MSNBC interview. "Well, Trump was actually president for 4 years and his policies bore no resemblance to those of Hitler, so this makes no sense," Musk wrote on X. But this does not mean De Niro was removed from the platform.

In fact, De Niro’s publicist, Stan Rosenfield, told PolitiFact, "Mr. De Niro does not have or use social media."

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stated on November 12, 2024 in an Instagram post

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy are “part of the World Economic Forum.”

We searched Google for news of Musk banning De Niro from X, but found none. There were only fact-checks of the claim.

PolitiFact has previously debunked similar claims that Musk banned author Stephen King, DreamWorks Animation and even Disney’s pride content from X.

We rate the claim that Musk permanently banned De Niro from X False.