Did Chelsea Clinton tweet in 2018 that she was sick of people harassing former President Barack Obama because he "had the courage of conviction to marry a transsexual" in Michelle Obama? No, that is not true. The tweet is fake. The former first lady is not a transsexual.
The claim can be found in a post (archived here) published to Facebook on September 24, 2019. The post, a screenshot of the fake tweet, starts with, "Yea right...:" The fabricated tweet read:
I get so sick of people degrading president Obama because he had the courage of conviction to marry a transexual. Because some women are born with a penis we must end transphobia today."
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Wed Oct 7 13:51:50 2020 UTC)
Nothing about the tweet is real, as even the poster, Daniel Gray, acknowledges in the comments section. He states, "Satire...just having some yucks here folks..."
The fact that none of this is true didn't stop it from spreading on social media. Here's a tweet containing the faked tweet image from May of this year:
-- Enki Crafts (@EnkiCrafts) May 28, 2020
Also, conservative commentators like Alex Jones on InfoWars spread the false claim to the point when, in August 2017, Chelsea Clinton -- the daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton -- came to Michelle Obama's defense.
Here is a Hollywood Reporter story about the conspiracy.
Yet, the fake tweet lives on, as evidenced by the fact that it was shared two years after Clinton had debunked it in The Hollywood Reporter. From Clinton on Twitter about the InfoWars "report":
.@MichelleObama is everything this site will never be-honorable, brave, beloved, beautiful. Don't need to watch an awful video to know that. https://t.co/0L8tyUiw0k
-- Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) August 25, 2017
Lead Stories previously debunked a claim that photos of Michelle Obama showed she was a man. Read Fake News: Photo Does NOT Show Michelle Obama With A Penis
