Photo: Roberto Schmidt / Getty Images News / Getty Images
President Donald Trump is promoting a false claim that former President Barack Obama earned $40 million in royalties linked to Obamacare.
On Sunday (November 9), Trump took to his Truth Social platform to push the fictional claim that originated from a satirical website known for publishing fake news.
The president shared a screenshot of an image of Obama alongside text that read: “BREAKING: DOGE halted a yearly payment of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare.’ He’s been collecting it since 2010, for a total of $40 million in taxpayer dollars.”
“WOW!” Trump captioned the image.
The royalties claim has been repeatedly debunked since at least 2017, when it first appeared on America’s Last Line of Defense, a satirical website created to provoke outrage and engagement from conservative audiences. The site, along with The Dunning-Kruger Times, is operated by Christopher Blair, a Maine-based writer who has called himself the “godfather of fake news.”
The false story resurfaced earlier this year on Facebook and other social platforms, where it again misled thousands of users. There is no evidence that Obama has ever received any royalties or payments associated with the Affordable Care Act, the 2010 health care law nicknamed “Obamacare.”
A White House spokesperson declined to answer questions about whether Trump knew the story was fictional.
Blair, the satirist behind the original post, told The Guardian in 2023 that several prominent Republicans had previously fallen for his work. He called Texas Gov. Greg Abbott “one of the dumbest people in the country” after the Republican shared another fabricated story from the Dunning-Kruger Times.
Trump’s post comes as he continues to attack the Affordable Care Act, while Democrats push to extend health insurance tax credits for millions of Americans who rely on the program.
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