Is Obama getting royalties from Obamacare? No, Trump’s DOGE claim originated from satire

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has continued after the May exit of billionaire and former presidential adviser Elon Musk, and so have false claims about supposed DOGE discoveries.

President Donald Trump shared Nov. 9 on Truth Social what appeared to be a recent DOGE effort to cut Affordable Care Act-related waste.

"#BREAKING: DOGE halts yearly payment of $2.5 million to Barack Obama for ‘royalties linked to Obamacare,’" the screenshot in the Truth Social post read.

"WOW!" Trump wrote. 

But the claim Trump shared originated from satire. It has had various iterations over the past eight years.

X posts with the same words and images circulated in March. PolitiFact rated them Pants on Fire. 

The claim originated from America’s Last Line of Defense, a satirical Facebook page operated by Christopher Blair. He is known for writing satire articles published on Facebook and the Dunning-Kruger Times website, and the articles are often reshared without the satirical context. 

The Dunning-Kruger Times website’s "About Us" page reads: "Everything on this website is fiction." The site published an article in February with the DOGE claim about Obama.

The White House press office did not answer PolitiFact’s question about whether Trump was referring to the satirical story. Spokesperson Kush Desai instead provided a statement about Obama’s wealth after leaving office.

PolitiFact also fact-checked a similar ridiculous claim in 2017 that the U.S. Treasury paid $411 million for "royalty payments for Obamacare." That also originated from Blair’s satire network. In 2017, Blair told PolitiFact he writes satire to fool conservatives.

America’s Last Line of Defense posted Nov. 9 on Facebook, "The President has re-truthed one of our most popular stories ever."

"Here’s the story the President is so concerned about," it said in another Nov. 9 post, linking to the Dunning-Kruger Times article published in February.

The claim that DOGE stopped a yearly payment of $2.5 million to Obama for Obamacare-related royalties is baseless and satirical. Our ruling remains Pants on Fire!