Fake news stories really are everywhere… and this post involving Jason Aldean and Stephen Colbert is one of the latest examples.
I’m sure you are well aware of people and accounts out there online that only exist to deceive others. Well, I at least hope that you are. Because it’s a real problem in 2026, and it’s only getting worse thanks to the misinformation supplement known as AI. Gone are the days where you could just trust what you see. Now, you have to fact check and cross reference just about everything you come across.
Though I’d say most people are able to recognize “fake news,” there are a concerning amount of others that tend to fall hook, line and sinker for fabricated news stories. Most of them are brought together with a simple graphic or AI-generated image. Then you’ve also got those narrated videos that sometimes accompany the post, and for some reason, if someone is talking over a picture slideshow, people take it as gospel.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many I’ve come across as I’ve surfed the web… it’s truly concerning. The only thing more troubling to think about are the thousands of people that are watching and consuming these stories and believing them. With social media being the main source of news for a large amount of the population, these fabricated stories are being churned out with reckless abandon, and they’re actually gaining traction online.
One of the latest is this fake story involving country music star Jason Aldean and late night host Stephen Colbert. Granted, both men have been in headlines in recent years for voicing their opinions about their respective sides of the political aisle. Maybe that’s why this fake news source decided to pit them against one another, and run with this story that Aldean walked off Colbert’s show.
The first giveaway that this isn’t true? The show Colbert hosts is called “The Late Show,” and not “Late Night.” Right off the bat, there’s something wrong. But some kept reading and became triggered by this:
“Jason Aldean walked off the set of Late Night with Stephen Colbert before playing a single note after the ‘comedian’ tried to humiliate him in front of the audience. ‘Colbert was introducing him,’ said Aldean’s manager, Ben Jarroo, ‘Then he made a crass, unnecessary statement about ‘forgiving him’ for supporting President Trump. Jason wasn’t having it.’ When Colbert said his name and motioned for the curtain, there was nobody there. Aldean and his band had walked off, and they won’t be coming back.”
Yeah… that didn’t happen.
First off, there’s no credible news source reporting on that story. In addition, Ben Jarroo is not Jason Aldean’s manager (that’s actually a name that’s often used by satirical, fake news accounts). And finally, and just to be frank, Stephen Colbert is mostly having liberal-leaning guests on his show as of late… since the Late Show comes to an end in May. There’s no chance Aldean would have been invited on these days in the first place.
Aldean did perform on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert back in 2018, but that was the last time he was ever on the set, as far as we know.
So why am I directing your attention to it? Hopefully to help you – the reader – discern what’s real and fake online. Concerningly, that post has over 7,000 likes, and over a thousands reposts to go along with hundreds of comments below it. No one apparently took the time to look further into the story… or the picture that’s included in the post itself.
If they would have, they’d see that no one else is reporting on this. And they also would have seen text at the bottom of the photo of Jason Aldean and Stephen Colbert that reads “nothing on this page is real.” It’s right there, hidden in plain sight, and yet some people still fell for this internet hoax built to get clicks.
My advice to you (more importantly to the older people in your life) is to ask yourself a couple of questions when you see something online. If it feels like there is something off, chances are your instincts are serving you right. And just like many of us were told to not believe everything you see on the internet… don’t fall for a graphic with a fake quote attached to it.
