As if the 2024 presidential race couldn’t get more chaotic, do we have a new candidate in the running?
A TikTok video reposted on Facebook appeared to include audio of former first lady Michelle Obama announcing her presidential bid as a man.
“I decided to wake up and run as a male to push my husband’s vision to the next level and save America from Donald Trump,” says a voice in the video that resembles Michelle Obama’s. The April 12 video shows an X post claiming this announcement was made in a “recent interview” with Oprah Winfrey.
“She will be following her husband’s footsteps and run for President in 2024 as a man to also stand in unison with Transgenders,” the post says.
But Obama has not announced she is running for president, and the original X post referred to was shared on April Fools’ Day.
(Screenshot of Facebook Reel)
The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)
PolitiFact reviewed news reports and Nexis news archives and found no evidence that Obama made an announcement that she was running for president.
A public announcement with Oprah Winfrey would have made massive headlines, but they don’t exist.
The social media post’s image comes from a 2020 interview that Winfrey conducted with Michelle Obama as a part of Winfrey’s 2020 Vision Tour. The transcript shows they did not discuss a potential presidential run, and interview coverage made no mention of such an announcement.
PolitiFact could not determine how the audio was generated, but artificial intelligence has been used increasingly to create deceiving audio of political figures.
The post, originally shared April 1 by popular X account “Dom Lucre,” appears to combine two common pieces of misinformation swirling around Obama. One, that she is running for president — which she has frequently denied. And two, that she is a man – a false and ridiculous claim we have repeatedly fact-checked.
The X post has a community note on it saying the audio is “fake.” Community notes are submitted by certain users and become public if “enough contributors from different points of view rate that note as helpful,” according to X. Similarly, a note can be taken down if enough users downvote it.
We rate the claim that Michelle Obama announced she is “running for President in 2024 as a man” Pants on Fire!
