One of the big problems with the Elon Musk era of X is that something can go mega-viral despite not being the slightest bit true. And Community Notes is barely a guardrail at all.
There was a shining example of this Thursday, when the video of a press conference from 2016, in which a group of Arizona officials purported to claim that former President Barack Obama’s birth certificate was a forgery, suddenly went viral on X. The video, from Phoenix’s Fox station, was shared by various conservative influencers and even one member of Congress — precisely the one you think — as if it were both new and truthful, even though it is neither. Some, naturally, chided “the media” for not covering this piece of non-news.
🚨 The media is showing how Obama’s birth certificate was changed! Obama was never born in the U.S. and was not a legitimate President!
Everything OBAMA signed will be reversed! pic.twitter.com/PlnoGnfC86
— Nicholas Veniamin (@NickVeniamin) February 20, 2025
Among those who fell for it was conspiracy-loving Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who as of 12 hours later had not deleted it:
Oohhh this is great!! https://t.co/xpLYNowtQL
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) February 20, 2025
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Others claimed vindication for Donald Trump:
🚨BREAKING: Obama’s birth certificate is a fraud.
Donald Trump was right pic.twitter.com/1meLojkVS0
— Philip Anderson (@VoteHarrisOut) February 20, 2025
Early on in Obama’s political career, and especially during his first campaign for president in 2008, rumors persisted that Obama had not been born in the United States, had been born in Kenya, and was therefore ineligible to be president. The racist conspiracy theory, known as “birtherism,” was pushed prominently by Donald Trump years before he ran for president. Obama seemed to put birtherism to bed when he released his long-form birth certificate in 2011 — and mocked Trump about it at the famous White House Correspondent’s Dinner afterward — and Trump even admitted during the 2016 campaign that Obama had been born in the United States.
But Joe Arpaio, then the sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona, continued to keep at it, and in late 2016, even after Arpaio’s ally Trump had given up the ghost, he held a press conference to claim that the birth certificate released five years earlier had been forged. That’s the one that suddenly went viral this week, nine years later. Jan Brewer, Arizona’s Republican then-governor and never a fan of Obama’s, disagreed with the findings at the time.
Arpaio went on to lose his re-election in 2016, getting convicted of contempt of court in 2017, although Trump pardoned him that same year. The now 92-year-old Arpaio has run for office multiple times recently, including his old sheriff positions, but lost every time. In fact, one of the key tipoffs that it was not a current video is that the chyron identifies Arpaio as the current sheriff when he hasn’t held that position in many years.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
