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Quick Take
Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency have been tasked by President Donald Trump with slashing federal spending. But social media posts falsely claim that as part of that effort, DOGE stopped “royalties” to former President Barack Obama related to the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. The claim came from a satirical website.
Full Story
On Jan. 20, his first day in office, President Donald Trump established by executive order the new Department of Government Efficiency “to implement the President’s DOGE Agenda,” which has included efforts led by billionaire Elon Musk to reduce government spending and cut the federal payroll.
But as we’ve written, some of the claims made by DOGE and the Trump administration about overpayments in the Social Security system have been exaggerated, and some claims about spending by the U.S. Agency for International Development have been inaccurate or unsupported.
In recent days, some social media posts have repeated a fabricated claim that DOGE had halted millions in supposed royalty payments to former President Barack Obama.
A Feb. 27 Threads post falsely claimed, “DOGE stopped an annual payment to Barack Obama for $2.6 million for ‘royalties associated with Obamacare.’ He’s been collecting it since 2010, for a total of $39 million in taxpayer dollars.”
The posts are referring to the Affordable Care Act, the health care law enacted in 2010 under Obama that became known as Obamacare.
But the claim that the former president had been receiving royalty payments for the health care law he championed was the invention of America’s Last Line of Defense, or ALLOD, which publishes fabricated political stories and claims on its websites and social media pages that it describes as satirical. ALLOD posted the claim about Obama this month, and the image shared on social media included a stamp labeling the claim as satire.
The ALLOD website says, “Everything on this website is fiction. It is not a lie and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.”
The other social media posts sharing the claim did not identify the content as satire.
We could find no evidence that DOGE had stopped any payments to Obama, who as a former president does receive an annual pension payment from the government. Obama has received about $10.5 million from his presidential pension and other government benefits, such as travel and office space, since leaving the White House, The Hill reported. Since he left office at the end of his first term, Trump had received more than $3 million.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Meta to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here. Meta has no control over our editorial content.
Sources
America’s Last Line of Defense. The Dunning-Kruger Times. “About Us.” Accessed 28 Feb 2025.
Cohen, Ben. “Trump, Musk Exaggerate Scale of Improper Social Security Payments to the Dead.” FactCheck.org. 22 Feb 2025.
Hale Spencer, Saranac. “Sorting Out the Facts on ‘Waste and Abuse’ at USAID.” FactCheck.org. 8 Feb 2025.
Jaffe, Alan. “Trump Administration Makes Unsupported Claim About $50 Million for Condoms to Gaza.” FactCheck.org. 30 Jan 2025.
Johnson, Rich. “Here are the benefits all US presidents get when they retire.” The Hill. 19 Nov 2024.
Pichi, Aimee. “What is DOGE? Here’s what to know about Elon Musk’s latest cost-cutting efforts.” 12 Feb 2025.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. “About the Affordable Care Act.” Accessed 28 Feb 2025.
U.S. General Services Administration. “Allowances and Office State for Former Presidents.” Fiscal Year 2024 Congressional Justification. Accessed 28 Feb 2025.
White House. Executive Order. “Establishing and Implementing the President’s ‘Department of Government Efficiency.'” 20 Jan 2025.