Is a photo of Robert De Niro flipping off the camera in front of Trump Tower and wearing a T-shirt that says "Obama are you coming home soon? The babysitter is weird" legitimate? No, that's not true. De Niro's rep told Lead Stories the photo was "fake." An online detection tool rated the photo of De Niro with his middle finger up and wearing a T-shirt with an anti-Trump message as likely generated by AI.
The claim appeared in a May 17, 2026, post by @GuntherEagleman on X (archived here). It opened:
President Trump BROKE Robert DeNiro! LOL!
This is what the image looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Image source: post by @GuntherEagleman on X.)
Lead Stories contacted De Niro's representative Stan Rosenfeld via email on May 18, 2026, and he said the image was "fake."
The Hive Moderation AI-Generated Content Detection tool rated the photo as 55% likely to be AI-generated:
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
A visual analysis shows that the text on the T-shirt lacks natural fabric distortion. The letters appear perfectly flat and uniform, superimposed over the fabric's folds, a sign of digital text editing.
Had De Niro, one of the most famous actors in Hollywood, and a vocal critic of Trump, worn the T-shirt while sticking his middle finger up in front of Trump Tower, it would have been major news. Lead Stories searched Google News and Yahoo! News (archived here) and found other fact checks but did not find any legitimate news reports about the photograph.
