Fact Check: Another False Story Claims Malia Obama Was Suspended From Harvard

“BREAKING: Harvard Suspends Malia Obama After Anti-White Rant” claimed a headline from the news aggregator site News Break. The website blurbs a small section of the article and provides a link to “read [the] full story.”

The blurb claims “on Sunday, Breitbart reported that Malia Obama wrote a racist, anti-white op-ed about John McCain.” Not a lick of this is true. Not even the suggestion that Breitbart published such an article.

But instead of linking to Breitbart (because no such story exists) or an actual news source, the reader is led to the website America’s Last Line of Defense, which operates under several URLs and clearly pegs itself as “satire,” writing fake stories such as “Here’s Proof Trump Helped Rescue 9/11 Survivors” and “BREAKING: Dems Diverted $50 Million From ICE To FEMA, Hurting Border Security.”

While America’s Last Line of Defense (ALLD) makes clear on its site it is a fake-news/satirical publisher, News Break (which links and blurbs ALLD frequently) does not. (In fact, News Break mostly links to actual news articles from Reuters, the Washington Post, etc.)

This is not the first time internet rumors claiming Sasha or Malia Obama have been expelled from their respective colleges have circulated. Fellow fact checkers, including Politifact and Snopes, have quelled similar claims from ALLD and others since 2017.

In what could be considered a clever move by a satire site, ALLD has deactivated its orginal post on Malia Obama’s “suspension” (the URL now redirects to the site’s home page) and has posted a follow-up “BREAKING: Harvard Reverses Malia Obama’s Suspension After Daddy Makes A Call.” Of course.

If you have questions about this fact check, or would like to submit a request for another fact check, email Holmes Lybrand at [email protected] or the Weekly Standard at [email protected]. For details on TWS Fact Check, see our explainer here.

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