Did Johnny Depp, Eminem, Cher, Paul McCartney or any other celebrity tell Donald Trump "You're tearing families apart ... Shame on you" at a live town hall meeting on immigration? No, that's not true: Nearly identical stories mentioning those and more than 40 other celebrities were published by a network of foreign websites and Facebook pages. There were no news articles about such an event and the story contained verifiably false details.
The Depp version appeared in a December 27, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) on the Facebook page of The Black Pearl Post. It opened: "Johnny Depp shocked the nation during a live immigration town hall when he confronted President Trump on his mass deportation plan." It continued:
Asked by Jake Tapper, Depp leaned in and froze the room with, 'You're tearing families apart and calling it policy. Shame on you.'
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Jan 5 17:14:19 2026 UTC)
The Facebook page "The Black Pearl Society" (archived here) which was used to promote the story had a page transparency tab (archived here) indicating it was run from Vietnam and Brazil:
(Image source: screenshot of the page transparency tab of the "[NAME GOES HERE]" page on Facebook.)
The Vietnam connection is significant, since fact-checkers, including Lead Stories, have identified a major source of AI-generated false stories coming from a single operation based in that Southeast Asian country. You can see recent reporting and fact checks mentioning that country here.
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of news sites for articles mentioning "shocked the nation during a live immigration town hall" and found no matches (archived here).
The Facebook post linked to a story (archived here) that included following passage:
'You're tearing families apart and calling it policy. Shame on you.' The immediate silence that followed was palpable. Tapper stopped writing, his eyes wide in disbelief. Trump, who had been sitting with his usual air of confidence, visibly shifted in his chair. For 17 agonizing seconds, the room was frozen. No one spoke. It was as if everyone was waiting for the air to clear, but it never did. Depp had dropped a bombshell, and he wasn't done yet. Johnny Depp, with a calm yet intense voice, pressed on, cutting through the tension in the room. "These people you dismiss? They feed this country, build this country, hold this country together while you sign papers like it costs you nothing." '
A search for "You're tearing families apart and calling it policy. Shame on you." on Depp's Facebook page did not return any results (archived here).
A search on Facebook for the phrase "You're tearing families apart and calling it policy. Shame on you." (archived here) brought up dozens of results with almost exactly the same story but about different celebrities, athletes and politicians. Lead Stories found posts naming:
- Rock star P!nk;
- Rock star Brian May;
- Pop star Johnny Mathis;
- Heavy metal star James Hetfield;
- Rock star Phil Collins;
- Rock star Bob Seger;
- Dancer Derek Hough;
- Rock star Neil Young;
- Swedish singer songwriter Agnetha Fältskog;
- EGOT Jennifer Hudson;
- Pop star Kelly Clarkson;
- Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg;
- Country star Lainey Wilson;
- Rock star Josh Groban;
- Rapper Jelly Roll;
- Pop star Guy Penrod;
- Dancer Lindsay Arnold;
- Dancer Maksim Chmerkovskiy;
- Folk singer Joan Baez;
- Rapper Eminem;
- Opera star Andrea Bocelli;
- R&B star Stevie Wonder;
- Professional football coach Matt LaFleur;
- Pop singer Celine Dion;
- R&B star Usher;
- Gospel star CeCe Winans;
- Heavy metal star Gene Simmons;
- Comic Adam Sandler;
- Soul singer Jamal Roberts;
- Motown star Smokey Robinson;
- Comedian Alfonso Ribeiro;
- Blues star Bonnie Raitt;
- Professional hockey player Connor McDavid;
- Professional golfer Scottie Scheffler;
- Singer-songwriter Niall Horan;
- Rock star Stevie Nicks;
- Rock star Carlos Santana;
- Pop star Linda Ronstadt;
- Professional football player Josh Allen;
- Rock star Bob Dylan;
- College basketball coach Mark Pope.
Shown below in a scrolling GIF are the results:
(Image source: Lead Stories animation of Facebook search results for the phrase "You're tearing families apart and calling it policy. Shame on you".)
Lead Stories has published a primer -- or a prebunk -- on how to identify these kinds of fake posts exported from Vietnam. It's titled "Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'".
