Once more, TWS Fact Check must engage in the fine art of sewer spelunking.
“Michelle Obama said ‘white folks are what’s wrong with America’” the meme reads, “Now imagine Trump saying “black folks are what’s wrong with America.’”
An older version of the meme used George W. Bush as a foil. This new Trumpy version comes from the Facebook group “Never Crooked Hillary” who obsessively shares “Red Pill” content and whose “about us” page peddles JFK assassination conspiracy theories for its 23,921 followers. (The group’s profile photo also gives users a good hint as to what they’re about, in case the name wasn’t clear enough. This is a family site, so we can only link to it.)
Some reporters have traced the quote back to an assertion by jewnews.com in 2015 that during her speech at Tuskegee University, Michelle Obama’s “message was clear, ‘whatever is wrong in your life is whitey’s fault, and whitey owes you.’”
(TWS Fact Check fears that the general public does not understand how to correctly use quotation marks.)
Michelle Obama said nothing of the sort in her speech. Read it for yourself. There’s nothing in there about “white folks are what’s wrong with America.” She used the story of World War II’s black airmen trained at Tuskegee to discuss racial unity, perseverance, and other tropes from the commencement speech genre.
Dear internet, please grow up.
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