Fake News: Harvard Did NOT Suspend Malia Obama, She Did NOT Make Anti-White Rant

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Harvard Did NOT Suspend Malia Obama, She Did NOT Make Anti-White Rant

Was Malia Obama suspended from Harvard after writing a racist, anti-white op-ed about John McCain? No, that's not true and there is no Breitbart report about it either. The story was made up by a site that publishes fake stories with satire disclaimers but then posts them on Facebook pages created by the site owner where he brought together lots and lots of conservatives and Trump supporters who actually believe it is all true. Fans of the site then mock them after they start liking, sharing and commenting on the "news". None of it is real.

The story originated from an article published on the website trumpbetrayed.us on August 28, 2018 titled "BREAKING: Harvard Suspends Malia Obama After Anti-White Rant" (archived here) which opened:

On Sunday, Breitbart reported that Malia Obama wrote a racist, anti-white op-ed about John McCain. While McCain was a traitor who sold out his nation's secrets, Obama's attacks on white people got her all the wrong kinds of attention -- including from the Harvard University disciplinary board.

On Monday, a panel of Malia's peers voted 7-4 to suspend her. "We find that Malia's use of the word 'cracker' and 'honkey' to describe the recently-deceased Arizona Senator John McCain violate the school's rules against hate speech," panel spokesperson Juliet O'Hara told a shocked crowd of students. "Ms. Obama will be suspended for the remainder of the semester and may appeal to return next year if she writes an apology to Senator McCain's family."

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail:

BREAKING: Harvard Suspends Malia Obama After Anti-White Rant

On Sunday, Breitbart reported that Malia Obama wrote a racist, anti-white op-ed about John McCain. While McCain was a traitor who sold out his nation's secrets, Obama's attacks on white people got her all the

The link to the supposed Breitbart story went to an image that looked like this:

The site comes with a clear satire disclaimer at the bottom of each article:

sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.

The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites, including potatriotpost.us, dailyworldupdate.us and nofakenewsonline.us. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". A second man working on the sites is John Prager as revealed in this earlier story we wrote.

Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up and he keeps knocking them down.

If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.

We wrote about trumpbetrayed.us before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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