Malia Obama Clickbait Controversy

Overview

Malia Obama Clickbait Controversy refers to two February 2019 stories which were used in an attempt to smear former first daughter Malia Obama. The first showed pictures of her holding a bottle of wine while vacationing with friends. The second was the discovery of her Malia Obama's private Facebook page which featured pictures of anti-Trump messages. While some conservatives attempted to use this information to smear the former first daughter, many others were quick to mock the smear attempts and claim the attempted smears only served to make Malia look cool.

Background

On February 17th, 2019, Radar Online^[2] posted a gallery of pictures of Malia Obama spending time with friends in a bathing suit while holding a bottle of wine (shown below).

On February 18th, 2019, The Daily Mail^[1] ran an article about Malia Obama's private Facebook account, which had not been updated since 2017. The piece shared several photos taken from Obama's Facebook page of her hanging out with friends, including Joe Biden's daughter Finnegan. Notably, they shared a photo taken from her account of an anti-Trump message written on post-it notes (shown below).

Developments

Some online users attempted to use this information to attack Malia's character. User @WilkowMajority^[3] attempted to say that because Obama, 20, was drinking underage and apparently having a lavish time, it was hypocritical she would not be attacked by democrats (shown below, left). User @zoevaldes^[4] also made it a point to note that Malia was underage drinking (shown below, right).

The vast majority of posts regarding the incident, however, featured backlash against the idea that people were using the information to smear Malia's character. Many Twitter users voiced support for Malia and pointed to Republicans who had engaged in underage drinking such as Brett Kavanaugh. For example, user @ZackBornstein^[5] made such a point, gaining over 12,000 retweets and 64,000 likes (shown below, left). Twitter user @tmarie1311^[6] posted an image of Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development in support of Malia, gaining over 10,000 retweets and 40,000 likes (shown below, right). Chelsea Clinton^[8] weighed in on the situation, writing "Malia Obama is a private citizen. No part of her life should be anyone’s clickbait." The story was covered by Splinter.^[7]

Search Interest

External References