Did Tom Cruise mock Nicholas Riccio, husband of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, at an awards ceremony in Los Angeles in 2025, and did Leavitt and Riccio publicly expose Cruise on stage? No, that's not true: A YouTube video recounting the story was no more than fantasy fiction. We found no record of any such incident at any awards ceremony in 2025.
The story was featured in an April 21, 2025 video on YouTube (archived here) which bore the title:
Tom Cruise Mocked Karoline's Husband -- But When He Stormed In, Everything Changed!
This is what it looked like at the time of writing:
(Source: YouTube screenshot)
Against a backdrop of images that resembled Leavitt and Cruise, a voiceover narrated the story at length, with the key factual claims being that Cruise mocked Leavitt's husband at a Los Angeles award ceremony, before Leavitt and her husband supposedly publicly exposed Cruise on stage.
That sequence of events did not take place, and the whole video was no more than a work of fantasy fiction. The account that posted the video came close to explicitly acknowledging that its content was fictional, writing:
...Here, we bring you unexpected and emotional tales that touch your heart and inspire your soul. Our stories are filled with surprising twists, life lessons, and deep human connections that resonate with viewers...
If Cruise, Leavitt, and her husband Nicholas Riccio had in fact had a public spat on stage at an awards ceremony in 2025, such an incident would have formed the basis of widespread and intensive news coverage.
An April 23, 2025, Google News search for "Tom Cruise" and "Karoline Leavitt" yielded no relevant results, further underlining the entirely fictional nature of this particular story.
