Is that really Rachel?

Updated August 10, 2025 —

The internet being what it is, sourcing information can sometimes be a challenge, particularly once it has been filtered through the various strata of social media.

We have noticed over the years that The Rachel Maddow Show has been on the air that some of the things Rachel says on TV, at outside speaking engagements, or online can take on a life of their own on the internet. And sometimes things she never actually said take on a life of their own as well.

To set some of the record straight, here are a few of the more common ones to cross our radar. If you have a question about whether a quote or event is really Rachel, write to the show on BlueSky at @MaddowBlog.msnbc.com and we’ll hunt it down (and maybe even add it to this page!).

The artificial intelligence-generated images associated with this particular fake story are not even very convincing, but for the sake of making the record clear, Rachel does not have a Blogspot and does not have an official Telegram channel.

Telegram is an option for submitting news tips on the Send It To Rachel page, but there is no associated channel or feed on that platform.

This is a tricky one to debunk because it’s not about the content of the video, which at first glance seems like a basic news story (about Canadian potato tariffs?), and unlike the artificial intelligence images on the fake Facebook posts, the rendering of Rachel is pretty accurate-looking. The fake voice is flat with a weird cadence, but also pretty close to accurate.

We are heartened, at least, by the fact that several viewers wrote to us on BlueSky to flag these videos because they recognized them to be fake.

So if you see a video of Rachel that is not posted by the official MSNBC account, and the video seems a little jittery, and her mouth is not quite making the right shape for the words, and the background is not the show background you automatically recognize by now… then there is a strong possibility that you are looking at an artificial intelligence-generated deep fake.

Our only consistent advice is to pay close attention and use trusted sources. Listen to the intonation and cadence of the speaking. Notice any weird lexicon. In this video they make the Rachel avatar say things like “thirteen dollars million.” That is likely because the A.I. doesn’t know how to look at “$13 million” as a single expression so it reads two separate words.

Nope. No "shocking twist," no "jaw-dropping turn of events," no "explosive new program." As much as Rachel loves Stephen Colbert, the idea that they have announced a show together is a false news figment of Facebook posts.

For some reason, the algorithm that drives the artificial intelligence tool that has been generating fake stories about Rachel likes the idea of Rachel and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt having a confrontation.

And so there are a few versions of that false fantasy floating around the internet. In one version, Leavitt says something enraging and Rachel kicks her off the show! In another example, Rachel tells Leavitt some unspecified hard truths.

The effect of these different stories is like a rumor. You may have heard something happened, but it's not clear what. In fact, none of it is true.

One version on YouTube actually includes a disclaimer that the story is fake and computer generated by artificial intelligence. But unfortunately, most of what you may have seen circulating on social media is not so transparent.

Typically, the fake quotes and impersonations we have to debunk on this page are driven by malicious intent. Someone wants to hurt Rachel so they impersonate her online to make people think she said something she didn't. That is not the case with the weird artificial intelligence-made story circulating on Facebook about Rachel responding to the recent floods in Texas, but the story is no less false.

It turns out artificial intelligence has been used to make a whole collection of fake stories about people with familiar names pulling people from floodwaters in Texas. We found fake stories about everyone from Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes to Elon Musk.

None of these flood stories about Rachel are true, least of all the ones in which the artificial intelligence has generated fake photographs of Rachel wading through water while wearing her on-air black blazer.

The artificial intelligence fake-story-maker that has been spreading weird false stories about Rachel on Facebook seems to like imagining Rachel in on-air confrontations with members of the Trump administration.

If you read or heard from someone that there was such a confrontation between Rachel and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, that is another false invention of artificial intelligence.

Have you heard the one about Rachel and Susan having a surrogate baby??

Holy moly these fake artificial intelligence stories are out of control!

It even makes fake photos to go with the fake story that show Rachel holding a baby! All fake!

A lot of these stories, sometimes referred to as “A.I. slop,” circulate for a bit on social media like Facebook and then get deleted and linger as rumors and then a new version pops up somewhere else and might show up in Google searches.

But if you do hear such a rumor, you can confidently reject that one as false.

Some of the recent spate of fake stories about Rachel that are generated by artificial intelligence and circulate in online spaces like Facebook are preposterous on their face, obviously false.

But sometimes there is a nugget of a detail that might seem possible, and might make a reader second guess whether the story contains some truth.

If Stephen Miller did come on the show, it probably would be a pretty contentious interview, so a fake, computer-generated story about them fighting, for example, might not seem too far out of the realm of possibility.

If you are a fan of Rachel, you know she is very independent. You also know that she has been working on a wide range of projects separate from the MSNBC show, including books and podcasts and documentaries and more. You may even know that some of these projects are produced under the umbrella of her production company, Surprise Inside.

And you are likely aware that Rachel has not been shy about making her criticisms of MSNBC known at times.

So if you came upon a story that claimed that Rachel was starting a new TV network, it might seem entirely believable to you that she would do such a thing.

It is not true, however. It's another false story generated by artificial intelligence and circulated on Facebook where unsuspecting people don't notice the sketchy sourcing and the weird photos.

Let's face it, on Facebook most people don't even read what they're commenting on. Most people read the headline and react. And so these fake stories take on a life of their own.

It's hard to know if the computer code that makes the artificial intelligence produce these fake stories can assess which outputs are more believable. Presumably there is a scammer somewhere out there benefitting from the distribution of false stories about Rachel, like this one about her starting her own network.

Rachel Maddow movies? True!

Even though Rachel would probably be the first to tell you that the idea that talents like Steven Spielberg and Ben Stiller would be working on her material seems like it could be straight out of a computer-generated fantasy news machine, in fact, it's true.

Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment has optioned film rights to Rachel's Ultra podcast from MSNBC and Rachel’s production company Surprise Inside.

And Ben Stiller is slated to direct an adaptation of Rachel's Bag Man podcast and book.

Using a fake, poorly photoshopped tweet is a weird way to argue against content moderation on Twitter.

This has been an oddly persistent meme for a quote that Rachel never actually said. It seems to be one of a class of memes that started as a quote placed next to a photo of Rachel and eventually the quote was falsely ascribed to Rachel. Google doesn't offer much help on the question of where the quote originally came from but it is not from Rachel Maddow.

NOPE. This is from that weird family of memes in which someone writes a random thing and then puts Rachel's photo on it.

This is actually a Facebook tease for a Steve Benen post. The link in Facebook doesn't work anymore but you can find a version of the post here.

Well, not exactly.

Rachel was clear in calling the protests in Venezuela “antigovernment,” but the banner on the screen while she said it was not correct. As a TV show, we have to get them both right, and sometimes we miss.

This is what Rachel said:

Now, Venezuela doesn’t get a ton of political coverage in the United States, but Venezuela is a country in intense turmoil right now. The sanctions that the U.S. put on Venezuela were put there in 2014, after 43 people got killed while participating in antigovernment protests. Another three people got killed in antigovernment protests just yesterday. There have been weeks and weeks and weeks of rioting and violent protests.

And now, today, Venezuelans are enraged anew by this brand new FEC filing from the White House which shows that interesting thing about the guy who got the meeting with the NSC officials and with Steve Bannon. It also shows that while Venezuelans have been rioting in the streets, while there have been acute food shortages and medicine shortages in Venezuela, this is a country that should be a rich country but people have literally been starving in Venezuela, somehow in the midst of this incredible economic and political crisis in Venezuela, Venezuela’s state-run oil company somewhere found a half million dollars to donate to the very, very, very inexplicably overfunded Trump inauguration.

We fixed the graphic on the web version, which you can watch here.

Nope: This group exists, but none of its founders are named Rachel and they don’t claim any affiliation with Rachel Maddow.

NOPE. It’s a fake Us Weekly page, fake story, fake quotes, fake everything.