In February and March 2026, a rumor spread that late-night TV host Stephen Colbert unexpectedly started a livestream at 3 a.m. to inform his viewers he had been threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump.
For instance, a Facebook page named Issa shared the claim at least three times between Feb. 16 and Feb. 20. It also shared the claim on March 11:
(Facebook page Issa)
Other pages also shared the claim, which was often accompanied by a link to an unreliable blog in the comments. (That link redirected to a website where the post's date suggested the rumor about Colbert had been spreading since at least Jan. 25, 2026). Snopes readers wrote in asking for more information about Colbert's supposed statement.
We found there was no evidence supporting the claim that Colbert had unexpectedly started a livestream after receiving a threatening message from Trump.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting about the rumor. If the rumor were true, a lack of reporting would be incredibly unlikely — Colbert's show (among other late-night shows) has made headlines multiple times over the past year due to what many observers interpret as a conflict with the Trump administration.
Rather, whoever authored the story fabricated the entire tale with a goal to earn advertising revenue on websites linked from the aforementioned Facebook posts and from the social media platform itself, a type of content often associated with AI-generated tools and sometimes called AI slop.
An examination of the Issa Facebook page's stories, for instance, found multiple indications of artificial intelligence-generated images. One photo included with the claim featured Colbert supposedly talking into several microphones, as if at a news conference. Those microphones, however, were labeled with complete gibberish. Another sign the page was a source of AI slop was its inhuman posting volume — new posts with similar story structures went up most hours of the day with minimal breaks.
Snopes contacted a manager of the Issa Facebook page to ask about the fictional stories displayed on the feed, and will update this story if we receive more information.
Colbert has often been a target of AI slop. Snopes previously checked false claims that he started a dog sanctuary or that he teamed up with Jimmy Kimmel and Simon Cowell to launch a new TV channel.