Did Robert De Niro say he had to leave New York City now that Mamdani is officially the mayor as some viral posts are saying? No, that's not true: The actor did not make the comments about having "no choice" and Mamdani wanting to take half of his savings because he was wealthy. The story and quote originated on a satirical Facebook page run by a liberal man with a long history of tricking conservatives into sharing made-up content.
The original post (archived here) was published on a Facebook page named "America's Last Line of Defence" on January 2, 2026 and it read:
Robert De Niro says he has "no choice" but to leave New York City now that Mamdani is officially the mayor.
"He wants to take half of my savings because I'm 'wealthy.' I haven't worked in some time. My savings is all I have."
De Niro was an avid supporter of the communist during his campaign.
Looks like he's reached the "find out" portion of his choices.
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Jan 17 10:55:04 2026 UTC)
As the logo in the image indicated, "Nothing on this page is real":
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sat Jan 17 10:55:04 2026 UTC)
The homepage of the America's Last Line of Defense Facebook account (archived here) mentions it is the "home of the Dunning-Kruger Times" and clearly states, "The flagship of the ALLOD network of trollery and propaganda for cash. Nothing on this page is real," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken by Lead Stories)
The page says it is run by "Busta Troll," which is the nickname of Christopher Blair.
Christopher Blair is a self-professed liberal from Maine who for years has run networks of websites set up to troll conservatives with made-up news items in order to get them to share his posts. He often goes by the nickname "Busta Troll." A 2018 BBC profile called Blair "the Godfather of fake news," describing him as "one of the world's most prolific writers of disinformation."
His websites usually have multiple satire disclaimers and the stories very often contain obvious hints they are not real, like category names indicating they are fiction, links to "sources" that instead go to funny or offensive images or an "S for Satire" logo added to the images used as illustration. Another telltale sign is the name "Art Tubolls" (anagram for "Busta Troll") for characters in the stories. Blair also frequently pays homage to two of his friends who passed away by using their names ("Joe Barron" and "Sandy Batt") in stories.
A Google News search for stories with the terms "Mamdani", "De Niro", "New York" and "leaving" did not bring up any results confirming the story (archived here) either, just a fact check from our colleagues at Snopes.
