The Biggest Rumors About The Obama Family

Being in the spotlight always comes with a certain level of scrutiny, but being in the political spotlight means much of it stems from a place of bigotry, prejudice, and hatred. Barack Obama knows this all too well. While some of the rumors that have surrounded him have been lighthearted – like when folks wondered if Obama wears makeup – most have been crafted to hurt and degrade.

From the moment Barack Obama first ran for the White House and all the way up until now, critics (many of them members of the far-right) have tried to weaponize fake news stories against him, his presidency, and his family. Unfortunately, not even the youngest members of the Obama family have been spared. Indeed, for over a decade, they've had to deal with mounting false facts about Barack and Michelle, absurd rumors about the first lady, and even hurtful stories about Malia and Sasha. And while all of the questionable theories have been debunked by reputable sources, haters continue to propagate fake headlines online with malicious intent. Here are all of the biggest Obama family rumors (some benign; many malicious) that have taken hold of the internet through the years.

Barack Hussein Obama II was born on August 4, 1961 in Honolulu, Hawaii and yet, there are those who believe he's not a U.S. citizen. Rumors began to spread during the 2008 Democratic presidential primary and, surprisingly, were fueled by Democrats. As Politico uncovered, Hillary Clinton supporters first began sharing an anonymous (and erroneous) email which suggested that Obama was not eligible to run because he was not an American citizen. The email, seen by Politico, alleged that Barack Obama's mother was living in Kenya in her third trimester and "she was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth."

The idea soon spread and morphed into a number of other similar theories. One suggested that while Obama was born in Hawaii, he didn't automatically receive American citizenship at birth because his father was a Kenyan citizen and his mother (who was from Kansas) was only 18 and too young to pass on her citizenship under the immigration law of the time. Other theories were even more far-fetched, arguing that Obama's U.S. citizenship was taken away in his youth because he traveled to Pakistan and broke a (non-existent) government ban.

Speculation over Obama's citizenship continued for years and found new wind in 2011 thanks to Donald Trump. Interestingly, even he eventually conceded the rumors were false. "President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period," Trump said in 2016, per TIME.

In addition to questioning Barack Obama's citizenship, numerous conspiracists debated where he was born and most honed in on Kenya. The former president's father does indeed hail from the East African nation, but Obama was not born there. As his birth certificate shows, he was born in Hawaii. However, a fake version of the document, which lists his birthplace as Kenya, began spreading online in 2009 and had people believing otherwise. The fact that Obama's half-brother, Malik (a passionate Donald Trump supporter), tweeted the fake birth certificate only added fuel to the fire. Interestingly, as Reuters noted, the forgery wasn't even a very good one. In one corner, it had a seal from "South Australia" and it also listed Kenya as a republic, which it was not at the time.

Ironically, the "birther" conspiracy really took off after the White House tried to debunk it by posting a copy of the real birth certificate online. Critics called it fake and speculation ran so rampant that the director of Hawai'i's State Department of Health had to actually come out and vouch for its authenticity. It didn't help. Over a decade later, the fake news is still spreading. In 2023, AP had to debunk a resurfaced video from 2010, which was originally posted by a parody YouTube account. In the clip, which many on social media shared as true, Obama's voice was altered to proclaim, "I wasn't born in the United States of America, I come from Kenya."

Was Michelle Obama born biologically male and named Michael? Of course not, but many people believe that to be the case. In 2019, a satirical website published a fake story claiming that Obama's mother had died and left everything in her will to her son, Michael Robinson Obama. The newspiece was widely circulated as truth and was still gaining traction in 2022, per AP. The conspiracy was given an extra push when Joan Rivers proclaimed in 2014, per CNN, "You know Michelle is a trans." What's more, social media also circulated a doctored image of a young Michelle whose face had been altered to have masculine features. It was even shared by Wanda Freeman Barzizza, the wife of a formal mayoral candidate from Tennessee.

The theory again caught steam in 2023. Podcaster Jason Whitlock propagated the misinformation while Republican Omar Navarro took to X (via Newsweek), formerly Twitter, to ask followers to "retweet if you think Michelle Obama is really a man." At the same time, conservative commentator Terrance K. Williams posted a poll asking, "Do you believe this rumor that Michelle Obama is a man" – 50% of respondents said yes.

Explaining why the theory has had such longevity, Newly Paul, an associate professor of print/digital media at the University of North Texas, told Snopes. "These claims will likely not go away [because] they seem rooted in spite, sexism, and racism, which fact-checks cannot cure."

Barack Obama was raised by a father and stepfather who were Muslim, however, he himself is a practicing Christian. Either way, his beliefs had nothing to do with his qualifications for office and yet, critics tried to misreport and weaponize his religion against him. Stories that Obama was Muslim first appeared in 2004, per Pew Research Center, but really went viral during his presidential run. From social media to mainstream media, misinformation spread and morphed, eventually claiming Obama had attended a radical Muslim school while living in Indonesia between the ages of six and ten. In reality, the elementary school, SDN Menteng 1, was a secular institution. "The allegations are completely baseless," said vice principal Akmad Solichin in 2007, per NBC News. "Everyone's welcome here – it's a public school."

Obama tried to debunk the falsehoods himself during a 2008 rally, saying, per NBC News, "I've been to the same church – the same Christian church – for almost 20 years." He also addressed claims that he was sworn into the Senate on a Quran. "I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible," he explained. Even so, in a 2014 poll conducted by The Washington Post, 54% of Republicans said they still believed Obama was Muslim.

And the rumors weren't just confined to the US. In 2016, after the Obama administration lifted sanctions on Iran, high-ranking Dubai official Dhahi Khalfan Tamim suggested that Obama's Shiite Muslim roots played a key role in the decision.

The youngest Obamas haven't been immune from fake news. In 2017, a satirical article appeared online, falsely claiming that Barack and Michelle Obama were not Malia and Sasha's real parents. As Snopes reported while debunking the story, the outlet jokingly alleged that a man had filed a lawsuit stating he was the girls' real biological father. According to the fake news hit, the man said he had donated the sperm used to conceive the girls. Soon, folks online were sharing the post like it was fact and analyzing images of the Obama sisters to "prove" they looked nothing like their parents. The strange conspiracy was further spread by Alex Jones. While criticizing Barack's parenting skills on his radio show, Jones called the former POTUS a bad father and quipped, per AOL, "The word is those aren't even his kids."

Politifact tried to trace the roots of the rumor and found that it actually dates back to as early as 2013. That year, a questionable blog post asked, "Where are Obama's daughters' baby pics and birth records?" The author suggested there weren't any (even though the Obamas have posted plenty of baby pics to social media) and said that was proof that Malia and Sasha had different birth parents. Since then, the false claim has continued to spread and has also been tied back to the conspiracy theory alleging Michelle Obama was born biologically male.

It was 2008 when a man named Larry Sinclair first came forward to claim he was Barack Obama's former lover. According to Sinclair, he met Obama in 1999 in Chicago and they soon proceeded to doing drugs together and having multiple sexual encounters. It was a surprising (and fake) revelation which the far-right quickly grabbed onto. As The Nation reported, the story soon morphed and evolved to include other "sources" who spread outlandish claims, like that Obama liked to visit a gay bathhouse with his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. As Poynter notes, political opponents also seized onto an old love letter written by Obama as proof of their claims. Penned in 1982 and sent to his then-girlfriend, the note included a variety of philosophical musings from the future president, including one particular passage they saw as a smoking gun. "I make love to men daily, but in the imagination," Obama wrote. "My mind is androgynous to a great extent and I hope to make it more so, until I can think of people, not women as opposed to men."

The theory was still being widely circulated as of 2023. In fact, it was given new wings that year as Tucker Carlson actually interviewed Larry Sinclair who again claimed he had an affair with Obama. He also alleged that other men were involved, but they couldn't speak up because they had all been killed on orders from Obama's campaign.

Malia Obama has done a great job of staying out of the public eye since leaving the White House. She graduated from Harvard with a degree in Visual and Environmental Studies in 2021 and has since started pursuing a Hollywood career as a director. However, despite her best efforts to remain low-key, she hasn't been totally immune to gossip. In fact, according to numerous rumors she's already been pregnant twice. (She hasn't.)

News of Malia's (fake) pregnancy first circulated in 2014 when a hoax website shared a story about a then-16-year-old Malia expecting her first child. The outlet went as far as to publish invented quotes they alleged were made by both Michelle and Malia Obama and tons of folks fell for it. It began to spread on social media and was given a further boost when a fake Facebook account impersonating Fox News also posted it. Snopes quickly debunked the story, but in 2022, it happened again. This time, a satirical Instagram account created a post claiming that Malia was pregnant with her super secret boyfriend, rapper Future. "This news came as a shock to many as the relationship between Malia and Future was kept secret until now," the caption read, per Politifact.

Given how many folks were convinced that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, it should have come as no surprise when just as many decided to believe that the former POTUS was moving back to his "home country" for good. It all began when a major newspaper in Kenya called The Standard published an April Fools' Day story in 2023, claiming that Obama had decided to leave America and settle down in the country. While it did include a disclaimer, noting that the article was purely satirical, folks chose to ignore that part and instead spread the article as if it were true. AP swiftly debunked the news, but that didn't stop it from spreading.

Propagators of the fake news argued it made perfect sense, tying it back to the "birther" claims. They also pointed out that Obama's father was born in Kenya and that the president had traveled to the country during his second term in 2015, then again in 2018. Indeed, Obama enthused about his trips on Facebook, which only served to convince people further. "Kenya, of course, is the Obama ancestral home," he wrote in 2018. "I visited for the first time when I was in my twenties and I was profoundly influenced by my experiences." Not so influenced that he was ready to pack his bags and move there, though...

From president to sports owner? Podcaster Bill Simmons nearly broke the internet when he alleged that Barack Obama was looking to buy the Phoenix Suns. During a 2022 episode of his show, The Bill Simmons Podcast, he pondered about who should invest in the NBA team and revealed, "I'm probably breaking some news here, but I heard Obama is involved in one of the groups." Simmons explained that while Obama wouldn't be a majority owner, he could easily be made the face of a group of rich investors who would buy the team together. And he, for one, thought it was a great idea. "That's the one guy that I feel like they would make him the actual face, and the money guys would be so happy to have him at the front," he told listeners.

Well, the rumor wasn't even remotely true. While on the campaign trail in Arizona, Obama set the record straight. "I didn't know I was in the market and, by the way, neither did Michelle," he quipped. "But I will say this, the Suns are looking pretty good [...] I think they have a few more wins than my Bulls right now."