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  • 2015-12-21 (xsd:date)
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  • Former Marine's Letter to Michelle Obama (en)
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  • On 17 December 2015, the web site Q Political posted an article titled When Michelle Obama Challenged a Marine, His Response Was Brutally Honest. With the exception of a few added brief sentences, a misleading photograph, and baseless claim that Michelle Obama challenged a Marine, the Q Political article was simply a verbatim copy of an opinion piece penned by Marine Mike Shepard and posted on 30 May 2015 to the DC Gazette (a clickbait web site that, among other things, posts fake news items as if they were real news). That piece began as follows: Shepard writes in his DC Gazette biography that he served in the U.S. Marines for 9 years: While Q Political did not mention Shepard's race, the photograph included with their article suggested that he was African-American: However, a YouTube clip of a radio interview with Shepard showed him to be white: Shepard's letter to Michelle Obama has been republished by several conservative outlets under a variety of misleading and sensationalized titles, such as When Michelle Obama Challenged a Marine, His Response Was Brutally Honest, Michelle Obama FURIOUS After U.S. Marine Sends Her THIS Letter, and Epic Letter from Marine Humiliates Michelle Obama. However, there is no evidence that Shepard actually mailed the letter to the White House, that Michelle Obama ever read the letter, or that her reaction to it was anger and/or humiliation. It's also false to say that the letter was written in response to a direct challenge from Michelle Obama. Shepard penned his letter to the First Lady a few weeks after she delivered a commencement speech at Tuskegee University. While Michelle Obama's speech touched on race relations in the United States, she did not issue any sort of challenge to the military in general or to Marines in specific. (en)
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