Here’s How The Bonkers Barack Obama-Jennifer Aniston Affair Rumor Got Started — And Spread
There’s a completely baseless rumor that former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama are headed for Splitsville over an affair with Hollywood star Jennifer Aniston — but how did the chatter get started?
The rumor has been kicking around since the summer, but has received an alarming amount of amplification recently — and not just from the tabloid likes of The Daily Mail or the clucking of partisan critics like Meghan McCain. No less a legit reporter than Puck senior political correspondent Tara Palmeri co-signed the rumor during a podcast with McCain, claiming “we’ve heard that for a long time. Like I just heard that they live separate lives.”
The most recent round of speculation was ostensibly prompted by Michelle Obama skipping the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter — during which Barack Obama famously sat with President Donald Trump and the two were seen in smiling conversation.
A simpler explanation for her absence — supported by her absence from Trump’s inauguration — would be a distaste for the occasion for whatever reason. Let’s just say she’s not a fan of Trump.
But the rumor sprang to life in the summer with an InTouch cover that proclaimed “The Truth About Jen & Barack!” that was based on a subscriber-only episode of the gossip podcast Who? Weekly.
Snopes has chapter and verse from that episode:
That episode opened with hosts Bobby Finger and Lindsey Weber describing a rumor that the Obamas were living separate lives and that Barack Obama was dating Aniston.
Around the 6:48 time stamp of that episode, Weber summarized the rumor, which she said she believed, as follows: “Michelle and Barack are living separate lives, and Barack is f—ing Jennifer Aniston.” Finger said he learned about the rumor independently from Weber, and that he believed it.
Neither host identified a source by name, although Weber said the rumor came from “reliable sources” connected in some way to Obama’s production company. Weber also briefly mentioned comedian John Mulaney, but did not explain his connection to the rumor.
In a summary of the episode, Finger and Weber linked to a 2014 piece from the Economist that mentioned an “affair” between Obama and Aniston. That Economist piece, it’s worth pointing out, was a satirical essay that imagined a hypothetical version of American politics based on the premise that the U.S. shared the French attitude toward scandal — it did not contain any factual reporting regarding any relationship between Obama and Aniston.
Weber also said during the episode that the story “obviously could be made up.”
The podcast also linked to a 2014 satire piece in The Economist that floated a fantasy affair between Obama and Aniston — perhaps the true genesis of this.
While the Obamas have not commented on the rumor, Aniston has. On the Oct 3, 2024 edition of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live, host Jimmy Kimmel produced a copy of InTouch and quizzed Aniston — who denied the rumor emphatically:
JIMMY KIMMEL: This is a magazine that came out a couple of weeks ago in –.
JENNIFER ANISTON: Oh Sh–!
JIMMY KIMMEL: Said the truth about Jen and Barack.
JENNIFER ANISTON: That’s kind of — that was. Of all the calls you get from your publicist where you’re just like, no, what’s it going to be? Or that email saying, you know, some cheesy tabloid is going to make up a story and then it’s that?
JIMMY KIMMEL: Yeah.
JENNIFER ANISTON: I was not mad at it!
JIMMY KIMMEL: Does your publicist ever go “Like, is there is there any any truth to this??
JENNIFER ANISTON: No, that is absolutely untrue.
JIMMY KIMMEL: Well, I know it’s not true. I just don’t know if everybody knows.
JENNIFER ANISTON: It is untrue.
JIMMY KIMMEL: Some people say it isn’t. So the truth about Jen and Barack is that there is no truth, it is untrue.
JENNIFER ANISTON: There is no truth.
JIMMY KIMMEL: Untrue. You know Barack Obama–
JENNIFER ANISTON: I have met him once.
JIMMY KIMMEL: Met him once.
JENNIFER ANISTON: I know Michelle more than than him.
JIMMY KIMMEL: What– is there a truth about you and Michelle that we should know?
JENNIFER ANISTON: It’s. It’s. It’s. That is not true.
Despite an utter lack of evidence and a fairly concrete indication of its fanciful origins, somehow the rumor still festers.
Watch above via ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live.