Facebook user falsely label Michelle Obama transgender

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Lademi Aborisade

Claim:  A Facebook video shows a man alleging that Michelle Obama is a man. 

Verdict: FALSE! The pictures used to portray her as masculine are fake, and the video of her husband calling her Micheal was taken out of context. 

Full Text

First Lady Michelle Obama is a lawyer, writer, and the wife of the 44th American President, Barack Obama. She is the pioneer African-American First Lady of the United States.

Ms Obama is well known as an advocate for healthy families, service members families, higher education, and international adolescent girls’ education. 

A Facebook user, Songasmangit Alkebulan, posted a video of a man saying that Ms Obama is transgender and that her real name is Micheal. He captioned the video with:

“Obama accidentally exposing himself and Michelle (Michael), as a transgender, the last woman saying Michelle was a trans was found murdered lately, we are in the age of hidden agenda exposed.”

In the almost two-minute video, different pictures and videos showed significant differences in Ms Obama’s body. The song in the background said, 

“How come anyone notices her private parts in her pictures.”

The video that has gone viral has garnered 3,300 likes and 1,900 shares since it was posted. 

The virality of this post and the personalities involved made us run a fact check.  

Verification 

We did an advanced Google search and saw that the claim is recurring. It was first posted on August 18, 2018, when Mr Obama was running for president of the United States. 

The post also shows a video of Mr Obama making a speech at the “Change of Office” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Ceremony, where he said Micheal and I. We watched the video from the beginning and saw that he was referring to Micheal, an admiral present at the ceremony. 

In the transcripted version of the video on the official website of Mr Obama, he said, 

“Most of all, Admiral Mullen, Deborah, Michael, and I also want to acknowledge your son Jack, who’s deployed today.” This shows that the video was taken out of context. 

We also found out that all the videos used to depict the masculinity of Ms Obama were edited using the image of men. The actual pictures of Ms Obama are in the Barack Obama Presidential Library. 

The post shared on Facebook, which said that “the woman that said Michelle was trans died mysteriously,” is false. Our investigation shows that the woman was Joan Rivers and died of low blood oxygen during a routine medical procedure to check out voice changes and reflux. 

Conclusion

Our findings show that Ms Obama is not transgender; all the pictures used to portray her as one are fake. We also discovered that the video of her husband calling her Micheal was taken out of context.