An alleged quote attributed to late night TV host Stephen Colbert circulated on social media in late July and early August 2025, purporting that the comedian made a cutting remark about the state of Christianity in the United States.

The quote has been shared on social media for years, as evidenced by a post on X from 2022.

In the wake of CBS announcing the end of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” however, users on social media started sharing the alleged quote once more on platforms like BlueSky, Threads and Facebook.

The alleged quote in question states:

If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn’t help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we’ve got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition … and then admit that we just don’t want to do it.

Some users agreed with Colbert’s alleged sentiment and shared the statement alongside an image of Colbert sitting at a desk, adding, “It’s time to reiterate what the teachings of Jesus or prophets/revered enlightened leaders of any religion were actually saying to help humankind evolve. It’s about love and inclusion. Not hate, violence, or power.”

The quote above was correctly attributed to Colbert.

The comedian said it during a Christmas-themed episode of “The Colbert Report” that aired on Comedy Central on Dec. 16, 2010, with featured guests comedian Amy Sedaris and musician Paul Simon. The segment in which the quote appeared was titled, “Jesus was a Liberal Democrat.”

It’s worth noting that “The Colbert Report,” which ran on Comedy Central from 2005 to 2014, featured Colbert playing a satirical characterization of himself as a conservative commentator.

However, we must also note that episodes of “The Colbert Report” are no longer available on any streaming services, and clips posted to YouTube are primarily limited to 2014, the show’s final year before Colbert moved on to host “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on CBS.

Nevertheless, there is substantial reporting about the quote from the time it aired, as well as an audio clip of the moment on YouTube that was published on Sept. 21, 2011. As such, we are confident in attributing the quote in question to Colbert despite a lack of visual evidence online.

Business Insider reported on the segment at the time, citing it as the latest in an ongoing war of words between Colbert and (real) conservative pundit Bill O’Reilly over Jesus’ teachings. The article cited a summary of an upcoming episode of O’Reilly’s show that read, “Colbert … Jesus … and the poor. The late night comic is now a theologian — and attacks Bill in the process! But does he have his Biblical facts straight?”

A writer for State of Formation, an “online forum for emerging religious and ethical leaders,” discussed the segment on Dec. 20, 2010:

It makes an argument that as both a religious and a political liberal I am all too happy to hear. It is Stephen Colbert — a person universally known and, among my generation in particular, almost universally esteemed and, yes, respected — calling out those who profess to be Christians yet espouse policies that further neglect or oppress those in the lowest income brackets. Beneath (and also because of) its satirical aim, this is a powerful argumentative blow to some on the religious and/or political Right.

Further, a writer for the alternative newspaper Portland Mercury discussed the segment the day after it aired and stated:

What really got me was a piece that brilliantly satirizes an issue near and dear to my heart: the inherent hypocrisy of Christianity in the West. Since this is Blogtown and not Obvious Theology 101 I know I don’t have to spell this s*** out; we all know that the basic tenants of Christ’s teachings (give away all your money, judge not lest ye be judged, divorced people are committing adultery, etc.) are ignored by pretty much everyone, especially those who claim to be Christians.

Finally, TV Tropes also listed the quote as Colbert’s, though it denotes it as attributable to “the character” rather than “the person.”

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In July 2025, Scott Whitehead, a man who described himself as an “animal expert” in his social media bios, posted a video of a pair of mountain lions, also called cougars or pumas, walking in the snow. According to Whitehead, the mountain lions were “mysteriously migrating south from Yellowstone to Utah.”

Internet users viewed the video Whitehead posted to Facebook more than 6.5 million times, while his video on Instagram racked up more than 156,000 likes by the time of this writing.

Many people took Whitehead’s claim seriously. Searches about mountain lions leaving Yellowstone National Park started trending on Google, and an X account with more than 1 million followers reposted it.

However, this was not a video of Yellowstone mountain lions migrating south to Utah. There was no evidence that the park’s small mountain lion population was “mysteriously” leaving the area, either. As a result, we’ve rated the video miscaptioned.

The video first appeared online on May 22, 2025, when a Chilean photographer shared it to Instagram. In the caption, the photographer wrote in Spanish that the video was recorded in Torres del Paine, a national park full of glaciers and mountains in southern Chile. That same account posted other photos and videos of mountain lions from the same region in May and June 2025.

There are mountain lions in Yellowstone, however; the National Park Service estimated on an informational webpage that only 29 to 45 cougars stay in Yellowstone National Park year-round, while some others enter it seasonally — in contrast to the “hundreds” Whitehead claimed were migrating in the video. The mountain lions in the park are “seldom seen,” according to the NPS.

Mountain lions anywhere do migrate and move around. About 99% of young male mountain lions disperse 50 to 400 miles from the place of their birth at about a year and a half old, according to the NPS webpage. Even within Yellowstone, cougars follow their main prey from the higher elevations in the summer to the lower elevations in the winter.

A Google search for “mountain lions leaving Yellowstone” found no mainstream news sources reporting on the apparent migration, even though such publications would surely report on such unusual behavior. Most of the search results were social media posts, fact-checks and sites that cited Whitehead as their source.

We found that the video Whitehead was speaking over was miscaptioned.

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In mid-June 2025, a rumour circulated on Facebook claiming former U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

For example, Robert Reich, former United States Secretary of Labor, posted the quote on his Facebook page, receiving over 80,000 reactions within two days. Two other Facebook posts attributed the quote to Eisenhower.

Historical records confirm that Eisenhower delivered this statement during a presidential address and primary sources document the quote’s authenticity. As a result, we’ve rated the attribution correct.

Eisenhower delivered the quote during his “Chance for Peace” speech, also known as the “Cross of Iron” speech, before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953. The address came after the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin, as Eisenhower sought to present an alternative to the Cold War arms race.

The website of the Miller Center, a nonpartisan institution at the University of Virginia, hosted audio of the full speech. The quote in question appears starting around the 11:17 mark.

The American Presidency Project also hosted transcripts of Eisenhower’s address. The Eisenhower Presidential Library listed the quote as authentic and also hosted audio of Eisenhower saying the quote in question.

Eisenhower delivered the speech from the Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C., and television and radio broadcast it nationwide. In the speech, Eisenhower presented a choice between military buildup and investment in human welfare.

The passage containing the quote read (emphasis ours):

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Eisenhower continued by suggesting different things the money used on weapons could pay for:

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

He concluded this section by stating: “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Despite the hopes Eisenhower expressed in the “Chance for Peace” speech, the Cold War continued to intensify during his presidency. By the time he left office in 1961, he felt compelled to deliver another warning about the “military-industrial complex” in his farewell address — a speech that bookended his presidency’s concerns about militarization.

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