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← All fact checksAfternoon run · November 1, 2026 · #9 by reach
CelebrityPoliticsQuote attribution

Did Patrick Stewart say America was on the edge of a "very bad flu infection" because of Trump?

Did Patrick Stewart say America is 'on the edge of a very bad flu infection' because of Trump?

True

Genuine 2017 A.V. Club footage, correctly quoted — the quote is real.

True. In a video interview published by The A.V. Club on 16 November 2017, Patrick Stewart said America was "on the edge of a very bad flu infection" because of "the man who is in the White House." Snopes and MEAWW both confirmed the wording and attribution, and our detector found no sign of AI generation.

+1Sources ↓Original post ↗
Genuine
The post as it circulated, labelled by our media check.Video · 1:53 · 1920×1080

Claims

✓ 3 true

In a 2017 interview Patrick Stewart said America is 'on the edge of a very bad flu infection' because of 'the man who is in the White House'.1234

✓ TrueCentral claimHigh confidence

This is the claim the whole post rests on, and it holds. The footage comes from a video interview The A.V. Club published on 16 November 2017, roughly ten months into Donald Trump's first term, and the wording in the post matches the interview closely: "when America sneezes, the world catches a cold" and "on the edge of a very bad flu infection... because of the man who is in the White House." Two independent fact-checks, Snopes and MEAWW, separately confirmed the attribution and the wording. Snopes also points out that the interview was published before generative AI tools were widely available, which rules out the most common modern objection to old viral clips. The decisive evidence is the primary source itself — the outlet that conducted the interview published the footage — reinforced by two fact-checks done after the clip resurfaced. The only caveat is a minor one about the post's caption: it truncates the quote mid-sentence, but the words it does carry are accurate.

Margaret Thatcher took Britain to war over the Falkland Islands and then was re-elected despite not being very popular.1

✓ TrueHigh confidence

Stewart uses Thatcher as a historical analogy — the idea that a struggling politician may need a war — and the factual bones of that analogy check out. Britain fought Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982 under Thatcher's government, and she went on to win a landslide in the 1983 general election, after a period in which her personal standing had been low. This part of the clip is not the reason the post went viral, but it is the part most likely to be challenged by viewers who distrust the whole quote. The evidence here rests on one fact-check source, Snopes, which lays out both the 1982 conflict and the 1983 result. That is fewer independent checks than the main quote has. The summary holds up, but Stewart's framing that there was "no reason whatsoever" to fight is his own opinion layered on top of the facts.

Still open: We did not find a second fact-check that examines this analogy in detail; confidence rests on one source plus the widely documented shape of the events.

Many senior US government posts were still unfilled and the administration argued the government was overstaffed.1

✓ Likely trueModerate confidence

This is the softest claim in the clip and it gets the lowest confidence for a reason. Stewart says there were "still all these jobs that haven't got appointees as yet" and that the response was that government was overstaffed. The underlying pattern — an administration slower than its predecessors to fill Senate-confirmed posts — was widely documented at the time, and the argument that the federal government was overstaffed was made publicly by the administration. But the post does not carry dates, numbers or a named source, and our sources treat it as background rather than testing it. Nothing in the record contradicts Stewart, and nothing in the record measures it either. We call it likely true rather than true because it is directionally accurate but unspecific, and a viewer should treat it as a general characterisation of 2017, not a statistic.

Still open: Neither the clip nor our sources give a precise count of unfilled posts at the time of the interview.

Brexit is a 'disgraceful mistake' and 'no one can tell me why it's a good thing'.

– OpinionHigh confidence

This part of the clip is Stewart's evaluation, not a fact to check. Calling Brexit a "disgraceful mistake" and saying no one has given him a good reason for it are value judgements and rhetorical challenges, and there is no factual assertion inside them that can be rated true or false. We mark it opinion so that a reader scanning the claim list does not mistake it for a verified finding. The distinction matters here because the post packages all of it together as one block of speech: some of what Stewart says in the clip is checkable history, and some is his view. Mixing evaluative statements into a genuinely authentic clip is not deception; it is what interviews do. The risk is only that a reader who accepts one part because it is true may assume the whole thing, opinions included, has been fact-checked the same way.

What was posted

X

A post on X shares a short video clip of actor Patrick Stewart speaking in a studio interview, captioned as "Patrick Stewart on Trump (2017)." The clip shows Stewart arguing that America's politics affect the rest of the world and criticising the man in the White House, then comparing him to Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands and calling Brexit a mistake. The post asks readers to accept that this is Stewart's own on-camera 2017 statement.

“Patrick Stewart on Trump (2017): “You might say to me, well, you’re not an American, what has it got to do with you? The fact is when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. America I think is on the edge of a very bad flu infection and it’s because of the man who’s in the”

Posted to X by an account using the display name Marco Foster. The caption is cut off mid-sentence with a shortened link appended. The clip recirculated in late October 2026, after Stewart's death.

Who posted it

X
@marcofoster_
View the account on X ↗

Account check

Looks like a genuine account55%
Likelihood of automation12%

Estimates from public signals — account age, posting pattern, audience — not a judgement of the person behind the account, and separate from whether this post is true.

What stood out

  • Handle maps to a real, identifiable person: Marco Foster Santarlasci of Brooklyn, NY — the Congressional Record (Nov 2022) and his father Joe Santarlasci's obituary both note that 'Marco' introduced his father to Twitter, matching the account's own bio ('@joesantarlasci's son').
  • Profile describes itself as a clip-curation account ('Covering the moments you might have missed. Political clips every day. Executive Producer @ReallyAmerican1'), i.e. an openly partisan progressive operation rather than a neutral newsroom.
  • Affiliation with ReallyAmerican1 (a Democratic-aligned advocacy media outfit) is self-disclosed, which is a transparency positive but signals an agenda-driven source.
  • Content is overwhelmingly reposted broadcast footage (MSNBC, CNN, Sky News, AP interviews, podcast clips), usually with the speaker named and sometimes the original videographer credited — sourcing is typically traceable.
  • Mainstream outlets (HuffPost, Yahoo, BuzzFeed, The Poke, MEAWW) routinely embed his posts as the source of viral clips, and no fact-check debunk of a fabricated or miscaptioned MarcoFoster_ clip surfaced in searches.
  • Posting is very high-volume and engagement-optimised (posts regularly hit 100k–6.6M views), fitting the 'political clipper' monetisation model that X began penalising in May 2026; no evidence he was personally sanctioned.
  • Risk profile is decontextualisation and one-sided selection (curated 'greatest hits' of progressive criticism of Trump) rather than outright invention.
  • Not platform-verified; profile scraped fields (bio/followers/creation date) were blank in the supplied data, so assessment relies on web evidence.
  • Name collision with an unrelated NYC pop/R&B singer 'Marco Foster' (@MarcoFosterworld) — not the same account, but a potential source of confusion.
  • No evidence of automated/coordinated inauthentic behaviour: consistent human curation, real identity, personal commentary and media citations.
Signals (12)+
Real identity corroborated
Yes
Identity evidence
Congressional Record 2022-11-10 (E1129) and Providence Journal obituary naming son 'Marco Foster Santarlasci of Brooklyn'; account bio references father @joesantarlasci
Declared affiliation
Executive Producer, @ReallyAmerican1 (progressive/Democratic-aligned media)
Declared location
Brooklyn, NY
Platform verification
No
Posting cadence
Very high; multiple viral clips per day
Typical reach
Individual posts 100k–6.6M views
Content type
Reposted TV/podcast interview clips with on-screen captions; limited original reporting
Source attribution quality
Mixed-to-good; speakers named, occasional videographer credit, but headlines reframed for engagement
Mainstream media citations
HuffPost (2026-07-20, Richard Gere/Steven Cheung story); Yahoo News (2026-10-28, 'political clipper Marco Foster'); BuzzFeed (2025-09, 2025-10); The Poke (2026-10-30); MEAWW (2026-01, 2026-02)
Fact check history
No fact-checker debunks of the account's clips found
Aggregator crackdown context
X demonetised large reupload accounts in May–Jul 2026; no documented penalty against @MarcoFoster_

Account checked November 1, 2026, 15:06 UTC

The media

Video
GenuinePresented as real footage· The claim depends on it

✓ What is genuine

The whole clip is genuine: real 2017 A.V. Club interview footage of Patrick Stewart, unaltered, carrying the words the post attributes to him.

The tells

  • ●●● Strong signal Our detector scored the video 0.99993 for 'not AI generated' and effectively zero for deepfake, with all major AI video models near zero.our detector
  • ●●● Strong signal An 'AV' watermark in the upper right of the frame is consistent with The A.V. Club's own branding, and the outlet published this interview.our visual review
  • ●●○ Supporting signal Lighting, natural skin texture, lip-sync and speech cadence look consistent with a real studio interview, with no morphing between keyframes.our visual review
  • ●●○ Supporting signal The interview was published in November 2017, before widely available generative video, as Snopes notes.Snopes

Synthetic-media detector

Detector ran

The claim stands or falls on whether the media is real, so the detector ran.

AI-generated likelihood0%
Deepfake likelihood0%

Scores are the detector’s estimate for the file as uploaded. A low score does not rule out editing, a spliced caption, or footage shown out of context — those are judged above. Model v3.

How we checked the media

  • Watched the clip and reviewed keyframes for continuity of clothing, posture and the studio background.
  • Checked the footage against the outlet that published the original interview and against two fact-checks of the quote.
  • Noted the 'AV' watermark in the upper right and matched it to The A.V. Club's branding.
  • Ran our AI-generation detector on the video.

Sources

4 sources reviewed

Further reading

  • 1Snopes (via Yahoo News Canada) The fullest fact-check of the quote, covering the original 2017 publication date and the pre-AI timing.
  • 2MEAWW A second independent check that also assesses whether the video shows signs of AI generation.
  • 3Prime Timer via NewsBreak Reports on the interview and the Thatcher comparison, useful for the historical context.

The full story

The thing to understand about this post is that nothing in it was invented. Patrick Stewart really did sit down with The A.V. Club for a video interview published on 16 November 2017, and he really did say that "when America sneezes, the world catches a cold" and that America was "on the edge of a very bad flu infection" because of the man in the White House.

The interview landed about ten months into Donald Trump's first term. Stewart, a British actor, framed his criticism explicitly around the question of whether a non-American had any standing to comment. He then reached for history, comparing the moment to Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands, and for parallel politics at home, calling Brexit a mistake.

The clip did not circulate much in 2017. What brought it back was Stewart's death in late October 2026, when people went looking for things he had said and old footage started recirculating. That pattern — genuine material returning years later after a news event — is common, and it is where a lot of false claims about dead public figures also start. Here the material was real and the attribution held.

The reason this needed checking at all is the timing. By 2026, convincing synthetic video exists, and a clip of a famous actor attacking a president is exactly the kind that gets faked and passed around. The checks matter less because the claim is surprising and more because the format invites doubt.

Kernel of truth

The clip and the quote are both real: genuine 2017 A.V. Club interview footage, resurfaced after Stewart's death in 2026, not a manufactured comeback.

Timeline

  1. November 16, 2017

    The A.V. Club publishes its video interview with Patrick Stewart, including the 'bad flu infection' remarks about Trump and the comparison to Thatcher. 1Snopes (via Yahoo News Canada)

  2. October 2026

    Patrick Stewart dies in late October 2026, prompting old interviews and clips to recirculate. 4X

  3. October 2026

    Fact-checkers publish checks confirming the resurfaced quote is correctly attributed to Stewart. 1Snopes (via Yahoo News Canada)

How it was framed

Accurate

The post presents genuine 2017 interview footage and quotes it accurately. The clip is unaltered, the attribution is right, and the checkable historical reference holds up. Some of what Stewart says in the clip is opinion, but the post does not distort it or invent anything.

  • Borrowed authority. The caption leads with "Patrick Stewart" by name and the interview format gives the remarks the weight of a famous actor speaking on camera.
  • “Visual proof”. The post attaches the video itself, so the viewer watches the statement rather than reading a summary of it.
  • Missing context. The caption says only "(2017)" and does not name The A.V. Club or explain why the clip is circulating now.

Posted on X by an account using the display name Marco Foster. The caption includes a shortened link and is cut off mid-sentence. The clip itself originates with The A.V. Club's November 2017 video interview and resurfaced in late October 2026 after Stewart's death.

Bias

NoneSlightModerateStrong

Leans anti-Trump. The post is a straight repost of a genuinely critical celebrity interview, framed without any counterpoint or context, and circulated amid tributes to Stewart. The slant comes from the quoted speaker rather than from fabrication, but the post's selection and framing are openly critical of Trump and Brexit.

Bias describes how the post frames its message — the slant of the language, selection and emphasis — and is judged separately from whether the claim is true. A true claim can still be framed with a strong slant.

How we checked

38 s
  1. 1

    Searched for the distinctive phrases from the clip, including "when America sneezes, the world catches a cold" and "bad flu infection", alongside Patrick Stewart and Trump.

  2. 2

    Searched for coverage of the interview and its 2017 date.

  3. 3

    Reviewed the two existing fact-checks of the quote, from Snopes and MEAWW, and a news report describing the interview.

  4. 4

    Watched the clip and checked keyframes for consistency of setting, clothing and appearance.

  5. 5

    Ran our AI-generation detector on the video, which scored it as not AI generated with a probability of about 0.99993 and essentially zero for deepfake.

✓ Claim checked✓ Media checked✓ Sources checked

Why 92% confidence

Moderate

We rate the headline TRUE with HIGH confidence on the main quote because the outlet that conducted the interview published the footage, two independent fact-checks agree, and our detector found no sign of generation. The lower MODERATE band sits on the overall package, which also contains an opinion passage and an unspecific claim about unfilled government posts that our sources treat as background rather than test.

Limits. We did not open the original A.V. Club page directly; the 2017 publication date and wording are established through the fact-checks and the reporting we reviewed. We could not measure the unfilled-posts claim against a specific count.

What we don’t know

  • How many Senate-confirmed posts were actually unfilled at the time of the November 2017 interview.
  • Who first reposted the clip when it resurfaced in late October 2026.
  • Whether the full unedited interview contains qualifiers that the circulating clip leaves out.

Spot it yourself

Why it looked fake

Looks suspicious, isn’t proof

  • A truncated caption ending mid-sentence with a shortened link. It looks sloppy, but plenty of genuine posts are cut off by character limits.
  • An old clip resurfacing right after a celebrity's death. That timing is a real warning sign for fake tributes, but it is also exactly when genuine archival footage recirculates.
  • The clip is politically charged and quote-shaped — a famous person saying something pointed about a president. That format is faked often, but being designed to travel is not evidence of being fake.
  • A video with no source named in the caption. The original outlet is missing, but the footage itself carries a watermark.

The actual evidence

  • The publishing outlet put the footage out itself in November 2017, which is the strongest possible source for an attribution claim.
  • Two independent fact-checks, Snopes and MEAWW, confirmed both the wording and the attribution after the clip resurfaced.
  • Our AI-generation detector scored the video as not AI generated with near-total confidence and found essentially no deepfake signal.
  • The 'AV' watermark matches The A.V. Club, and the date precedes widely available generative video.
  1. 1

    Find who published the original

    For a quote attributed to an interview, search the quote alongside the outlet's name or the word 'interview'. If the outlet that conducted it published the clip, the attribution is settled.

  2. 2

    Check whether the clip predates easy fakery

    Note the date. Footage from before generative AI was widely available is much harder to have faked convincingly. Use the original publication date, not the date the post was shared.

  3. 3

    Look at the watermark, but do not stop there

    A logo shows where a clip came from. It can be added to a fake, so use it to find the original outlet and then go look at the original itself.

  4. 4

    Separate what can be checked from what cannot

    In a clip like this, pull out the historical and factual statements and check those. Statements of disapproval are opinion and cannot be rated true or false.

  5. 5

    Ask why it is circulating now

    A sudden wave of an old clip usually follows a news event. Finding that event does not make the clip fake — it tells you what to verify.

Takeaway

Authentic content can spread for reasons that feel suspicious, such as a death or an election, and a ragged caption tells you nothing about whether the footage is real. The question that settles it is who published the original, not who reposted it.

Questions people ask

Did Patrick Stewart really say Trump put America on the edge of a "very bad flu infection"?+

Yes. In a video interview The A.V. Club published on 16 November 2017, Stewart said that when America sneezes the world catches a cold, and that America was on the edge of a very bad flu infection because of the man in the White House. Snopes and MEAWW both confirmed the quote and the attribution.

Is the Patrick Stewart clip AI-generated?+

No. Our detector scored the video as not AI generated with near-total confidence, and the fact-checks found no sign of synthetic generation. Snopes also notes the interview was published in 2017, before generative AI video tools were widely available, so the footage predates the technology used to make convincing fakes.

Why is this 2017 clip circulating again in 2026?+

The clip resurfaced in late October 2026 after Patrick Stewart's death, when people were revisiting his interviews and old footage. Old, genuine material often returns to circulation after a public figure dies, which is why the timing alone is not evidence that a clip is fake.

Was Stewart right about Margaret Thatcher and the Falklands?+

Broadly, yes. Britain fought Argentina over the Falkland Islands in 1982 under Thatcher, and she won a landslide in the 1983 general election after a period of low personal popularity. Stewart's view that there was no reason to fight is his own opinion layered on those facts.

Does an authentic quote mean everything in the clip is fact?+

No. The clip mixes checkable history with Stewart's opinions, such as calling Brexit a disgraceful mistake. A real clip can contain opinions, and a quote being accurately attributed says nothing about whether the speaker's views are correct.

Go deeper

Attribution
The question of whether a particular person actually said or wrote the words being shared.
Provenance
The origin and history of a piece of content — who first published it, when, and how it has travelled since.
Generative AI
Software that creates new images, video or audio from prompts, which can be used to fabricate convincing footage of real people.
Deepfake
A video or audio clip manipulated with AI so that a person appears to say or do something they did not.
Watermark
A logo or mark overlaid on footage showing which outlet or account produced it, which can be added to fakes as well as real clips.

People also search for

Patrick Stewart when America sneezes the world catches a coldPatrick Stewart bad flu infection Trump interviewPatrick Stewart A.V. Club interview Trump 2017Sir Patrick Stewart Trump quote real or fakePatrick Stewart Margaret Thatcher Falklands Trump comparison
For educators+
Attribution versus accuracy: a quote can be correctly attributed and still contain opinionProvenance and primary sources: why the publishing outlet outranks the reposterRecirculation after news events, and why timing is a prompt to check rather than a verdictAI detection and why publication date matters in an era of synthetic video
  • The quote is genuine, but part of the clip is opinion. How should a reader separate the factual claims from the evaluative ones when they arrive in the same video?
  • Would you trust this clip more or less if it had no watermark and no named outlet? What would you do to check it?
  • Old footage often resurfaces after a public figure dies. What steps would you take to tell a genuine archival clip from a fabricated tribute?

About this check

Platform
X
Posted by
@marcofoster_
Posted
October 29, 2026
Age when checked
Older post, still live
Where it spread
United States
Audience
US audience
Language
EN
Status
● Post is live
Verified
November 1, 2026, 15:07 UTC
Published
November 1, 2026, 15:07 UTC

Reach. 29,550 likes, 220 replies (x-syndication, 2026-11-01); spread after Stewart's death and got a Snopes check on 31 Oct

This verdict was generated with AI from the sources shown. AI can make mistakes — check the sources before relying on it.

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