Claim
81-year-old actor Robert De Niro swears at US president Donald Trump while presenting at the 97th Academy Awards in Los Angeles on March 2 (Sunday).
The archived versions of the posts can be seen here and here.
Fact
Newschecker noticed that the banner in the background read Tony Awards, indicating that the incident is not from the Academy Awards. The Tony Awards are the New York theatre industry’s equivalent to the Oscars.
We then ran a keyword search for “Robert De Niro Trump Oscars”, which led us to multiple news reports from June 2018 stating that De Niro received a standing ovation at the Tony awards in New York for attacking the president. “Appearing on stage at New York’s Radio City Music Hall, De Niro declared: “… As the applauding audience rose to their feet, De Niro continued: ‘It’s no longer down with Trump…’ He then continued with an apparently prepared introduction of Bruce Springsteen. Although the show was broadcast as-live, CBS had time to bleep out the f-word for TV audiences, thought to number around six million,” read a Guardian report, dated June 11, 2018, sharing a video.
A June 11, 2018 X post by NBC News, sharing a video of the moment, can be seen here. Similar reports can be seen here, here and here, further confirming that the viral video is not from the 2025 Oscars.
Also Read: Epstein Files Out: Bill And Hillary Clinton Flee US? Viral Photo Is From 2018
Sources
Guardian report, June 11, 2018
X post, NBC News, June 11, 2018
