Rachel Maddow

Did Barron and Melania Trump, Prince Harry Mountbatten-Windsor, Eminem and Vince Gill each "quietly spend $10 million" to build churches without seeking publicity? No, that's not true: The fake images and nearly-verbatim fake stories appear on Facebook pages that send users to made-for-advertising sites. The church-building stories, featuring more than a dozen different celebrities, are the Christmas 2025 entrant in…

This is what fact checkers call a "prebunk." A prebunk is like a debunk (another word for fact check), only it's an advance notice of an anticipated false claim. This article is intended to inoculate you from future outbreaks of a specific type of false claims about your favorite entertainment celebrities, sports stars, and politicians. We call this "Viet Spam"…

Did Mike Johnson storm out of the House of Representatives chamber after Rachel Maddow exposed his wife's secret LLC? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that the Speaker of the House stormed out of the chamber the MSNBC host aired an episode about his wife's secret LLC. There are no actual news reports of Johnson storming out of…

Was Pete Hegseth sued for $50 or $60 million along with a television network after an "on-air clash" with Robert Irwin or someone else? No, that's not true: A network of spam pages on Facebook put out dozens and dozens of variations of the same story, sometimes with a slightly different dollar amount, in which the clash was variously with…

Did Rachel Maddow, Stephen Colbert and Jimmy Kimmel just team up and launch a newsroom named "The Independent Desk"? No, that's not true: The story appeared on a recently launched website that does not list owners or publishers and it just adds Jimmy Kimmel to an older false story about Maddow and Colbert. The new story also contains verifiably untrue…

Did MSNBC host Rachel Maddow "takedown" White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller on air in a live interview? No, that's not true: Miller has never appeared on Maddow's show. The social media post and article saying it happened offered no proof of a date or time or evidence that the interview ever took place. There are no credible…

Did Stephen Colbert and Rachel Maddow announce a new show together, after CBS cancelled "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" in July 2025? No, that's not true: Maddow's blog called the story "false news". The rumor was published on a relatively obscure blog and reposted on Facebook. The fake story appeared in a July 20, 2025, blog post (archived here)…

Was President Donald Trump's son Barron drafted into the military as of June 30, 2025? No, that's not true: According to the Selective Service website, the United States hasn't drafted anyone for more than half a century, as of this writing. Footage presented as a report by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, on the supposed drafting, was fake. The claim originated in…

Did President Donald Trump's economic advisor Peter Navarro once attribute quotations to a supposed expert named "Ron Vara", who turned out to have been invented by Navarro himself? Yes, that's true: Navarro admitted in 2019 to having invented "Ron Vara", which is an anagram of "Navarro". He cited Vara's supposed opinions and quotations in several books dating back to 2001.…

Did an authentic video show Rachel Maddow crying on air in November 2024 over an Elon Musk meme concerning ownership of MSNBC? No, that's not true: The clip was taken from a June 20, 2018 MSNBC broadcast. Maddow had become emotional while reading a report about babies and young children sent to immigration shelters in South Texas. The claim appeared…