Did Rachel Maddow, tennis champion Coco Gauff and former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, plus dozens of other prominent Americans, post identical brave notes from a hospital bed, saying "I still have a long road ahead. But I believe in recovery -- through love, through support, and through everyone's thoughts and prayers."? No, that's not true: The stories, with identical quotes and structure, aren't corroborated by credible independent news reports. They are the product of a network of Vietnam-based internet publishers scamming advertising dollars with traffic built on fake news.
The Maddow version of the heart-string-tugging hospital story appeared in a Dec. 18, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) where it was published on the Rachel Unfiltered page under the title "GOOD NEWS from Rachel Maddow: A heartfelt message after surgery". It, like the many duplicates, opened:
"I still have a long road ahead. But I believe in recovery -- through love, through support, and through everyone's thoughts and prayers."
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Rachel Unfiltered Facebook page.)
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of news sites for news articles mentioning "I believe in recovery", " through love, through support" and "Maddow", finding no matches (archived here).
Similar searches using the names of other celebrities in the carbon-copy stories did not return results, either.
A search on Facebook for the phrase "I still have a long road ahead. But I believe in recovery through love through support and through everyone's thoughts and prayers." (archived here) brought up dozens of results with almost exactly the same story but featuring different celebrities, athletes and politicians, accompanied by very similar images showing the prominent person in a hospital bed or hospital setting.
Lead Stories found posts involving:
- New York Rangers center Vincent Trochek;
- Rocker Alice Cooper;
- Carolina Panthers coach Dave Canales
- Rocker Ann Wilson;
- Rocker Gene Simmons;
- Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes;
- Texas Tech football coach Joey McGuire;
- Seattle Seahawks Coach Mike MacDonald;
- Rapper Usher;
- American Idol star Jamal Roberts;
- New England Patriots coach Mike Vrabel;
- Retired Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs;
- Actor Robert De Niro;
- Rapper 50 Cent;
(Image source: Lead Stories animation of Facebook search results for the phrase "I still have a long road ahead.")
The page transparency tab of the "Rachel Unfiltered" Facebook page used to promote the story shows that page is managed from Vietnam:
(Image source: screenshot of the page transparency tab of the "Rachel Unfiltered" page on Facebook.)
Similarly, the website (archived here) to which the Facebook post sent readers of the Maddow story listed Vietnam as its homebase on its Terms of Service page.
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 focused on this content.
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'.
