Fact check: Image claiming to show Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The claim: Image of Barack Obama's birth certificate shows he was born in Kenya
Fake images of former President Barack Obama's birth certificate have been circulating on social media for years, and one is again circulating widely.
A Facebook user shared an image on Sept. 22 of what purports to show Obama's birth certificate. The birth certificate has the words "Coast Province General Hospital" and "Mombasa, British Protectorate of Kenya" at the top, implying that Obama was born in Kenya.
The image generated more than 70 shares in less than a week.
"I never posted it as real, but as a meme," the Facebook user told USA TODAY.
Experts say memes are often used to spread misinformation under the guise of humor or satire. But that doesn't even apply in this case since the post contained no accompanying text or overlay consistent with a meme.
It's simply wrong.
The birth certificate shown in the image is fake. Obama was born in Hawaii, not Kenya, according to his actual birth certificate, which was published by the White House during his presidency.
"Birther" conspiracy theorists have long made false claims about where Obama was born. The false claim surfaced in 2004 and persists even now.
Obama's real birth certificate
The birth certificate the Facebook user shared claiming Obama was born in Kenya was the same one tweeted by Malik Obama, the president's half brother in 2017 with the caption, "Surely. What's this?"
According to Yahoo News, Malik has a strained relationship with his half brother and also backed now-former President Donald Trump, one of the biggest voices of the "birther" conspiracy that claims Barack Obama isn't a U.S. citizen.
But the birth certificate shown here is fake. Obama was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961, according to his real birth certificate published by the White House. A long-form version of the birth certificate also published by the White House shows the Hawaii Department of Health certifying this is a true copy at the bottom in print.
"In fact, the document posted on the campaign website is what Hawaiians use to get a driver's license from the state and the document recognized by the Federal Government and the courts for all legal purposes," Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer said on the White House website in 2011. "That's because it is the birth certificate. This is not and should not be an open question."
Obama also addressed the publication of his birth certificate in a speech on April 27, 2011.
"We've had every official in Hawaii, Democrat and Republican, every news outlet that has investigated this, confirm that, yes, in fact, I was born in Hawaii, August 4, 1961, in Kapiolani Hospital," Obama said in his speech.
'Birther' conspiracy theory questions Obama's eligibility
Claims about Obama's place of birth began in 2004 as he became more prominent on the national stage, according to Politico. Political opponents tried to circulate falsehoods about Obama's heritage and religion.
When Obama ran for president in 2008, the "birther" conspiracy theorists questioned whether he was eligible to serve.
Some Hillary Clinton supporters questioned Obama's citizenship during the Democratic campaign, but Clinton herself and her campaign were not a part of these rumors, according to Politico. A National Review blogger asked the Obama campaign to publish his birth certificate to put to rest questions about his origin.
The Obama campaign published his birth certificate on its website, "Fight the Smears," which debunked false rumors, and gave it to Daily Kos, a liberal website, according to Politico.
FactCheck.org examined and photographed the original birth certificate and concluded that it met all of the requirements from the State Department for proving U.S. citizenship.
This didn't stop people from circulating fake birth certificates online.
In 2009, PolitiFact debunked another fake birth certificate, which claimed to come from the Republic of Kenya, dated Feb. 17, 1964. But Kenya only became a Republic in December 1964.
Reuters also debunked a version of the Kenyan birth certificate that resurfaced in 2020.
Our rating: False
Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim an image of Obama's birth certificate shows he was born in Kenya. Obama's real birth certificate shows that he was born in Honolulu on Aug. 4, 1961.
Our fact-check sources:
- Politico, April 22, 2011, Birtherism: Where it all began
- Politico, Sept. 16, 2016, No, Clinton didn't start the birther thing. This guy did
- New York Times, Oct. 12, 2008, The Man Behind the Whispers About Obama
- FactCheck.org, Aug. 21, 2008, Born in the U.S.A.
- PolitiFact, Aug. 2, 2009, Birthers have obtained a copy of Obama's Kenyan birth certificate
- Reuters, June 17, 2020, Fact check: Old fabricated Obama "Kenyan birth certificate" resurfaces
- Malik Obama, March 9, 2017, Tweet (archived)
- Snopes, March 10, 2017, Obama's Half-Brother Tweets Image of Debunked Kenya Birth Certificate
- Yahoo News, March 10, 2017, Why has Barack Obama's half-brother raised the "birther" issue again?
- FactCheck.org, Jan. 19, 2017, Fact check: Eight years of trolling Obama
- Obama White House via archives.gov, accessed Sept. 30, Birth certificate
- Obama White House via archives.gov, accessed Sept. 30, Long-form birth certificate
- The Obama White House via YouTube, April 27, 2011, President Obama on His Birth Certificate & the Real Issues Facing America
- Obama White House via archives.gov, April 27, 2011, President Obama's Long Form Birth Certificate
- The Florida-Times Union, Aug. 8, 2010, Fact Check: No (again), that is not Obama's birth certificate from Kenya
- USA TODAY, April 29, Fact check: Image falsely claims to show Harris and Pelosi sleeping during Biden's speech to Congress
Thank you for supporting our journalism. You can subscribe to our print edition, ad-free app or electronic newspaper replica here.
Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: Image claiming to show Barack Obama's birth certificate is fake
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Once a birther fool always a birther fool.
Talk about living in the past. I thought that birther crap was dead and buried years ago.
Trump was a birther util September of 2016. Then he finally recanted:
Donald J. Trump publicly retreated from his “birther” campaign on Friday, tersely acknowledging that President Obama was born in the United States — and effectively conceding that the conspiracy theory he had promoted for years was baseless.
Mr. Trump made no apology for and took no questions about what had amounted to a five-year-long smear of the nation’s first black president. I nstead, he claimed, falsely, that questions about Mr. Obama’s citizenship were initially stirred by the Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton , in her unsuccessful primary contest against Mr. Obama in 2008.
I'm still waiting for all the good stuff that the investigators he sent to Hawaii came up with.
My understanding is that both PI's went native. This is the last photo of one of them.
Here is a copy of Rafael Edward "Ted" Cruz's CANADIAN birth certificate:
yes, it is well known that Cruz was an American citizen born in Canada.
Was an American citizen? Isn't he still, or has he taken on Mexican citizenship?
I'll let you run wild with that imagination.
Let's see if you can figure it out.
Obama was most likely born in Hawaii, but little is known or can be verified about his early years...including who his real father was.
First, if you have finally admitted he was born in Hawaii to an American mother, then any other discussion of legitimacy is pointless and irrelevant.
Second, your link is just one long winded bullshit racist conspiracy theory generator mostly gleaned from Breitbart, and there is no valid question about who Obama's "real" father was. You might as well have linked an article from the 'National Inquirer' claiming Obama's real father was an alien retrieved from the area 51 and that Obama was secretly raised on a hidden island in the Pacific by Elvis and JFK. People who believe the kind of horse shit spewed by right wing conservative crazy media like Breitbart should seriously be committed to an institution for the mentally incompetent.
World Nut Daily! LOL!
WND (formerly WorldNetDaily ) [1] is an American news and opinion website and online news aggregator which has been described as " fringe " and far-right [6] as well as politically conservative . [7] The website is known for promoting falsehoods and conspiracy theories . [16]
Obama ordered up that bio. His likely real father Fink Marshall Davis. Very little in his books happened or was true. And, what race is "African"?
BHO was a manufactured phony and imposter with a murky and hidden past.
Rather sad how these useless racists are so desperate to delegitimize our first black President that even half a dozen years after he's out of office they're still forging fake birth certificates. I've no doubt there are still hundreds of thousands of these dumb fuck bigots who are so invested in their moronic conspiracy theories that they'll automatically believe whatever lies and fakes are dumped on the internet as long as it confirms their bias regardless of the mountain of evidence to the contrary.
I've lived during the serving as POTUS of presidents starting with FDR, and although some have been criticized, some made fun of, I had never seen such concerted efforts to from the start consistently disentitle or to demonize American presidents as what started with Obama and increased exponentially since. In the cases of Nixon and Clinton, their downfalls didn't happen until around the end of their terms.
It started with Clinton I believe - thanks to Newt Gingrich, and has indeed increased exponentially since.
As with old plumbers, conspiracy theories never die, they just smell that way.