Welcome To America: Where Hoaxes, Satire, And 'Fake News' Seem To Predict The Future
Satire was meant to be an exaggeration. Now it's turned into a policy rough draft.
A video is currently going viral of former Florida state senator turned U.S. Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio appearing on camera before a blue backdrop, flanked by an American flag, telling the world:
Under President Trump, the United States will stand with the Jewish people. We have implemented a vigorous new visa policy that will prevent foreign nationals from coming to the United States to foment hatred against our Jewish community. We are holding international organizations and nations accountable for rhetoric against Israel that resurfaces in the manifesto of monsters like Yaron and Sarah's killer, but we do see an eventual light at the end of this long tunnel of suffering. One can imagine the Middle East in which the Abraham Accords eventually reign. So, thank you for the opportunity to address you.
Countless accounts have posted the clip across every conceivable social media platform, touting it as proof that Rubio said: “If you criticize Israel, you will be denied a visa to the United States.”
But it’s not real. At least, not in the way people are attempting to make you think it is.
The video clip and, more specifically, the captions that are accompanying it, epitomize the concept of “fake news.”
The clip of Rubio actually hails from May 28, 2025, and captures the last 42 seconds of a 4-minute address that Rubio recorded to be played at the Foreign Minister's Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem. Rubio was referencing Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgim, two employees of Israel's Washington embassy who were murdered outside a Jewish Museum in the District of Columbia just days before Rubio made this address.
The clip is being utilized across social media now, more than a year later, as little more than a hoax. Fake news. Satire, at best.
But things begin to get cloudy here. Because Marco Rubio did essentially do exactly what these viral clips are accusing him of, just not in the way they’re portraying it — serving as a stark reminder that, in modern-day America, satire, hoaxes, pranks, and “fake news” often serve as little more than a thin veil over, or even an educated prediction of, the cold, hard truth.
Satire, History’s Way Of Easing The Pain
Satire is defined as “an artistic and literary style that uses humor, irony, and exaggeration to expose and criticize human flaws, corruption, or foolishness in society. Its main goal is not just to make people laugh, but to point out problems and spark change.”
Throughout history, as far back as Ancient Greece and Rome, it’s been utilized as a way for human beings to ease the pain of their suffering through a laugh; and, if it just so happened to spark a bit of change, then all the better. People have been saying some version of, “If I don’t laugh, I’ll cry,” for centuries, and satire serves as a way to put that notion into tangible action.
Satire rose to its Golden Age in the 18th century, when people truly began to harness its power as a vehicle to ignite real change, and exploded into the 19th century with the rise of political cartoons from artists like William Hogarth, James Gillray, Thomas Nast, and vicious literary takedowns from the pens of authors like Charles Dickens and Mark Twain.
Ultimately, nothing is more painful and inspires one to more reform than being made fun of.
But somewhere along the way, as social media grew into the monolithic giant we’re familiar with today, satire began to morph into pranks, deep fakes, hoaxes, and Trump’s personal favorite, “fake news.” It rapidly transformed into not just a thin veil over the truth, but almost an unsettlingly accurate prediction of the future.
The Truth About Marco Rubio
While the clip of Marco Rubio that’s now going viral is an inaccurate cherry-picking, a large seed of truth is still buried just underneath the surface, because Rubio did, in fact, essentially do exactly what these “fake news” clips are accusing him of.
In March 2025, Rubio proudly announced that the US had revoked the visas of at least 300 foreign students as part of a wide-reaching effort to rid the United States of anyone who dared to speak out in support of the Palestinian people and against the State of Israel. Rubio admitted, “We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.”
The Trump Administration landed itself in court over this very tactic.
Just last year, POLITICO reported that Rubio personally, actively worked to create and issue guidance that instructed officials to scour the social media accounts of student visa applicants for any semblance of supposed “antisemitism” — a term that has been twisted by the Trump Administration to no longer mean hatred towards Jewish people, but merely any criticism of Israel at all.
Ultimately, the claims attached to this viral video are fake, yet the undercurrent of what Rubio has done and continues to do is painfully real.
The Pattern of Satire in America
In modern-day America, this pattern of predictability and undercurrent of painful truth that’s found in satirical and “fake” content across social media is far from a new phenomenon.
In fact, The Babylon Bee, a satirical website that describes itself as “the definitive source of fake news you can trust,” once told Fox News that nearly 100 of the right-leaning satirical headlines published on their site ultimately became fulfilled prophecies.
In 2019, The Bee published a satire story with the headline, “Trump: 'I Have Done More For Christianity Than Jesus,’” which was inundated with fact checks and false ratings at the time, only for Trump to turn around and say just that, almost word-for-word in an interview two years later.
Trump himself, along with a countless number of his people, have “joked” about an unconstitutional third Trump term, even as recently as his White House Correspondents’ Dinner earlier this month, only for Trump to slip in an undercurrent of deadly serious truth whenever the opportunity arises, going so far as to brazenly tell NBC's Kristen Welker in May 2025 that he was “not joking” about securing himself a 3rd 4-year round inside the White House.
In this day and age, it’s beginning to feel like satire, hoaxes, and fake news drop the punchline, and reality scrambles to bring it to true fruition. What used to be a massive, comical over-exaggeration is now being used as a rough draft for what’s to come and a synopsis of what has been, and, frankly, that should scare the hell out of you.
This satire, a Canadian-centric satire written by an American author and to be released by Canadian publisher Guernica World Editions on “Sept 1 but written 16 years ago, certainly predicted the future (i.e., the antagonistic present between Canada and the US):
“The View from Stansberry Lookout is a tale for our times. A richly imagined satire of quantum doorways and dying republics engulfed in flames—both metaphorical and real—it is timely, funny, and frightening. Dystopia has never been so fun. Fans of Vonnegut, rejoice! —Will Ferguson, Leacock-winning author of Meanwhile, Back in Nokomis”
https://guernicaeditions.com/en-us/products/the-view-from-stansberry-lookout