Is a picture of Malia and Sasha Obama with Anita Blanchard and Martin Nesbitt an authentic photo of the Obama daughters with their "real parents," as a social media post claims? No, that's not true: It's a composite made up of separate pictures of the Obama daughters and Anita Blanchard and Martin Nesbitt. Blanchard and Nesbitt are close friends of the Obamas, not the parents of their daughters.
The claim appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) where it was published on March 9, 2024. The caption read:
Sasha and Malia with their real parents (they aren't Barry and Big Mike's children)
This is what the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Mon Mar 18 14:10:54 2024 UTC)
The post does not say where this image was obtained or the identities of the two older people. Searching for "Malia Obama AND Sasha Obama AND real parents" (archived here) on an online news index yields numerous results -- about Malia and Sasha with their real parents, former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, and fact-checking debunks of other baseless claims involving the Obamas.
A reverse image search (archived here) of the Facebook post found the original image of Sasha and Malia Obama standing next to Barack and Michelle Obama.
A reverse image search (archived here) of the couple in between Malia and Sasha showed this was Anita Blanchard (archived here) and Martin Nesbitt (archived here), a married couple from Chicago. Blanchard, a now-retired doctor, and Nesbitt, a co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity firm The Vistria Group, are close friends of the Obamas (archived here). The original image of the couple can be found here.
Lead Stories reached out to the Obama Foundation and will update this article when a relevant response is received.
Lead Stories has debunked a previous Blanchard and Nesbitt/Obama claim here.
More Lead Stories claims debunking Obama claims are here.
