Did Travis Kelce, Jelly Roll, Bruce Springsteen, Caitlin Clark and a 12 other celebrities say that President Trump was "a vicious old bastard draining America's soul after the Born-in-America Act"? No, that's not true: The claim that at least 17 different sports stars and entertainers made that identical statement was made up by a Vietnamese-based spam factory that uses artificial intelligence tools to mass produce clickbait claims for an American audience. There was no Born-in-America act passed by the U.S. Congress.
One example of the claim appeared in a post (archived here) published by the "US Insight Journal" page on Facebook on January 11, 2026. It opened:
JON STEWART BREAKS HIS SILENCE ON LIVE TELEVISION: CALLS T.R.U.M.P "A VICIOUS OLD BASTARD DRAINING AMERICA'S SOUL" AFTER THE BORN-IN-AMERICA ACT
The red light came on.
Jon Stewart didn't bring notes.
He didn't joke.
He didn't soften a single word.
Full s.t.o.r.y below👇👇👇
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Tue Jan 20 15:08:36 2026 UTC)
The post continued:
As the broadcast shifted to coverage of the midnight rollout of the Born-In-America Act and Donald Trump's public endorsement, Jon Stewart delivered 42 seconds of raw, unscripted remarks--stripping away comedy, legacy, and performance to confront something far heavier.
"Let's call it what it is," Stewart said, his voice calm, steady, and unmistakably fierce.
"A vicious old bastard and his political circus just turned millions of Americans into second-class citizens overnight--on the very ground they call home.
"Donald Trump isn't protecting the Constitution; he's wringing it dry.
He isn't leading this country--he's draining every value that's kept it standing."
A search (archived here) of Congress.gov for "Born-in-America Act" found no such legislation was proposed or passed.
A "Born in the USA Act" (archived here) has been proposed, but not yet passed. The bill, which is co-sponsored by 17 Democratic senators and no Republicans, would prohibit federal agencies from carrying out Trump's executive order (archived here) that would deny U.S. citizenship to children born in the United States to a mother who is not in the country legally.
Lead Stories identified almost identical posts claiming that these celebrities called Trump a "vicious old bastard": Jon Stewart, Willie Nelson, Taylor Swift, Dolly Parton, Travis Kelce, Jason Kelce, T.J. Watt, Jelly Roll, Bruce Springsteen, Caitlin Clark, Micky Dolenz, Alan Jackson, Gretchen Wilson, 50 Cent, Dave Mustaine, Bob Dylan, and Nick Saban.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshots of Facebook)
Each post is promoted by Facebook pages that are administered from Vietnam, which is confirmed by the pages' Meta transparency data, such as this one:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Facebook)
The caption of each post includes a link to an article on a website, such as this one (archived here), that has the hallmarks of being generated by AI tools.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of livextop.com)
The website's "Terms and Conditions" page (archived here) acknowledges it is managed from Vietnam.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of livextop.com)
Lead Stories and other fact checking organizations have extensively investigated the Viet Spam operations, and we've published dozens of fact checks targeting these false claims (read them here.) A deeper dive into this can be found in our article Prebunk: Beware Of Fake Fan Pages Spreading False Stories About Your Favorite Celebrities -- How To Spot 'Viet Spam'.
