What was claimed
Malia Obama received $2.2 million from the United States Agency for International Development, USAID.
Our verdict
This claim appears to have been first shared as satire. There’s no evidence it is true.
Image claiming Malia Obama received $2.2 million from USAID was shared as satire
Posts claiming that Malia Obama received $2.2 million from the United States Agency for International Development, USAID, are circulating on social media. But this claim appears to have been first shared as satire, and there’s no evidence it’s true.
The posts shows a photo of former US President Barack Obama’s eldest daughter, Malia, with overlaid text saying: “Can someone explain why Malia Obama received $2.2 million in funds from USAID? Enquiring, taxpaying minds want to know.”
But this image appears to come from a Facebook page called America's Last Line of Defense (ALLOD), which says in its bio that “Nothing on this page is real”. A small version of the page’s profile photo—showing a man holding a tankard with ‘ALLOD’ written beneath—appears in the bottom right corner of the image. The page shared a very similar claim in other posts that supposedly quote Malia Obama saying: “I provided penpal services for dozens of lonely kids in impoverished countries.”
But we could find no credible reports of Malia Obama saying this, and no evidence she received any such funds from USAID.
The US government’s website shows only two payments that mention Malia Obama, which are collectively worth $41,022. These relate to accommodation and “vehicle rental for a protection visit” in September and October 2016, while her father was still president. These were both paid by the Department of State, not USAID.
We’ve recently fact checked other claims relating to USAID, including that 8% of the BBC’s “total funding” came from the agency and that an E! News report had claimed the agency sponsored celebrity visits to Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, neither of which is true.
This comes after President Donald Trump suspended most of the US government’s international aid spending, and both he and X owner Elon Musk, who is heading up a new US government advisory board called the Department of Government Efficiency, have said they are looking to shut USAID down.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as satire because this claim appears to have been first shared as satire, and there’s no evidence it is true.