Did Karoline Leavitt or someone else tweet "You Need To Shut Up" at various celebrities and did they all react during a "live show" with millions of viewers? No, that's not true: Dozens of variations of the same story but mentioning different celebrities were posted by a network of Facebook pages and websites operated from Vietnam. Leavitt's personal and official account did not post a tweet with those words.
One example of the story appeared in a viral Facebook post (archived here) published on December 14, 2025 by a Facebook page named "Lunar Symphony". The post read:
🔥 "YOU NEED TO SHUT UP!" -- The tweet att@cking Céline Dion backfired spectacularly when the legendary singer calmly read it out loud during a live performance, capturing the attention of the entire audience and leaving the venue in stunned silence.
When Karoline Leavitt accused Céline Dion of being "out of touch" and declared that she needed to be "silenced," she surely never imagined Céline would respond -- let alone do so during a live show, in front of millions of viewers.
But in a now-viral moment spreading like wildfire across social media, Céline Dion stood poised, looked directly into the camera, and read every word of the post -- line by line -- before addressing it with the kind of grace and unwavering calmness that have defined her career for decades.
No shouting.
No sarcasm.
Just truth -- delivered with the composed authority of a woman who has built her legacy on authenticity and resilience.
Viewers immediately called it "the most graceful yet powerful comeback in live performance history." Even some of her most vocal critics admitted it was impossible not to feel the quiet strength in her words.
When she finished speaking, the venue fell into absolute silence... and to this day, fans still haven't stopped talking about that moment.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Dec 20 16:10:56 2025 UTC)
The post in question linked to an article (archived here) titled "🔥 "YOU NEED TO SHUT UP!" -- The tweet attacking Céline Dion backfired spectacularly when the legendary singer calmly read it out loud during a live performance. ws".
The Facebook page "Lunar Symphony" which was used to promote the story had a page transparency tab (archived here) indicating it was run by several people from Vietnam:
(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. We have published at least 70 fact-check articles in 2025 focused on this content.
There were no results in search for the phrase "you need to shut up" on Karoline Leavitt's official X account (archived here) or her personal account (archived here).
A search on Facebook for the phrases "you need to shut up", "tweet" and "backfired" (archived here) brought up dozens of results with almost exactly the same story but about different celebrities, athletes and politicians, accompanied by very similar images. Lead Stories found posts involving following people being target of the tweet:
- James Hetfield
- Stephen Colbert
- Cat Stevens
- Deion Sanders
- Adam Lambert
- Barbra Streisand
- Dan Campbell
- Trisha Yearwood
- Josh Groban
- Celine Dion
- Andrea Bocelli
- Maksim Chmerkovskiy
- Rod Brind'Amour
- Todd Bowles
- Jasmine Crockett
- Carrie Underwood
- Drake Maye
- Marcus Freeman
- Eric Clapton
- Rhonda Vincent
- Courtney Hadwin
- John Foster
- Kid Rock
- David Muir
- John Hynes
- Neil Young
- John Kennedy
- Nigel Farage
- Adam Sandler
- Johnny Joey Jones
There was also a variation where someone else was supposed to have sent the offending message:
- Whoopi Goldberg
- Spencer Carbery
- Adam Schiff
- Joy Behar
(Image source: animation of Facebook search results for the phrases "you need to shut up", "tweet" and "backfired" .)
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'"
