Did a dozen celebrities including Rob Schneider, Jerry Seinfeld, Pete Buttigieg and Pete Hegseth each launch "the first anti-woke morning show" on Fox, as Facebook posts claim? No, that's not true. Fox made no such announcement, nor did the celebrities whose names were pasted into identical fake stories about the claim, written with no apparent understanding of federal employment rules or U.S. politics. There are no reports about such a launch on real entertainment business news sites or any others.
The Schneider version of the claim appeared in a Feb. 4, 2026 Facebook post (archived here) on the Movie Moments page under the title "THE WAR ON MORNING TV JUST EXPLODED". It opened:
Fox News is rolling out what insiders are already calling the FIRST "ANTI-WOKE" morning show and at the center of it is Rob Schneider, who is openly positioning himself as the counterpunch to The View. As the 2026 media season kicks off, this isn't just another program launch... it feels like the opening salvo in a full-blown cultural showdown.Is this the start of a real shift in the TV landscape, or a publicity gamble that could backfire? Either way, the battle lines are being drawn -- and The View is squarely in the crosshairs.
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of Movie Moments Facebook post.)
There aren't enough hours in the morning show slot of 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. to accommodate that many individual shows. Buttigieg, a gay former Democratic Cabinet secretary, would be an unlikely choice to host an anti-woke show on the leading conservative cable news network. Hegseth, a sitting Cabinet member at the time this was written, would be forbidden outside employment under ethics rules governing the conduct of presidential appointees.
The Facebook page "Movie Moments" provided no page transparency tab to show where the page's administrators are located.
Lead Stories searched the Google News index of thousands of sites for news articles mentioning "Fox", "first anti-woke morning show" and "Schneider". That search did not return any results (archived here). Similarly, a search for "Fox", "first anti-woke morning show" (archived here) found no mentions of those phrases in real articles about any celebrity hosting a new Fox morning show.
The Facebook post of the Schneider version linked to a story (archived here) that included following passage:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of fake news article on breakingradar.com.)
Lead Stories searched Schneider's verified Facebook account manually, finding no announcement that he would be hosting a new show on Fox.
A search on Facebook (archived here) for the phrase "first anti-woke morning show" generated almost identical stories featuring Schneider, Seinfeld, Buttigieg and Emmy Lou Harris, plus:
- Kurt Russell
- Brandon Lake
- Ella Langley
- Jamey Johnson
- Taylor Momsen
- Kid Rock
- Snoop Dogg
- Mark Wahlberg
- Chris Stapleton
- Katt Williams
- Pete Hegseth
Here's a GIF illustrating the range of celebrities announced as Fox News morning show hosts in the fake posts:
(Image source: animation of Facebook search results for the phrase "first anti-woke morning show" .)
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'"
