Earlier this week, Donald Trump took to Truth Social to make one of his more bewildering claims that former President Barack Obama received $40 million in royalties from the Affordable Care Act.
This is not true.
It’s not almost true.
It’s not even in the ZIP code of being true.
It is, in fact, spectacularly untrue, the kind of claim that doesn’t just break with reality, but backs up over it a few times for emphasis.
What to Know…
Trump’s claim that Barack Obama receives royalties from the Affordable Care Act is entirely false – federal laws do not produce royalties, and the rumor originated from a website that openly publishes fictional satire.
The claim originated from the Dunning Kruger Times, a parody outlet whose very name references the psychological phenomenon where people with low competence vastly overestimate their knowledge.
The episode illustrates how misinformation thrives when public figures amplify satire as fact, reinforcing the Dunning-Kruger effect and highlighting the vulnerability of political discourse to confident ignorance.
The Truth: Obama Receives Zero Dollars From the ACA
The Affordable Care Act is federal legislation. Presidents do not earn royalties from federal laws. There is no legal, ethical, financial, or imaginary mechanism through which the Obama family could be receiving payments from a government statute. There is no royalty system for public policy.
That is not how laws work, and it has never been how laws work.
So where did Trump get this idea?
From a satire site.
The Source is a Satire Website
The claim originated on an outlet called the Dunning Kruger Times, which is part of the America’s Last Line of Defense Network, a collection of parody websites best known for publishing fake stories that small-minded and ignorant people mistake for news.
The site literally labels itself: “A network of parody, satire, and tomfoolery.”
Its content is fiction.
Nothing on it is real.
This is stated plainly on the website.
In other words, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, posted a claim based on a story that announces very clearly that it’s a joke.
Which brings us to the irony layered into this whole situation like a seven-layer dip of delusion: the meaning behind “Dunning Kruger.”
The Dunning-Kruger Effect, Explained in 90 Seconds
The term comes from a 1999 study by Cornell psychologists David Dunning and Justin Kruger, inspired by a truly unforgettable news story.
In 1995, two men robbed a bank in Pittsburgh without masks, sunglasses, hats—nothing. They were caught on camera. When the police arrested them, the robbers were shocked. Confused. Utterly baffled.
Why? Because they had rubbed lemon juice on their faces. They believed, sincerely, that lemon juice would make them invisible. After all, lemon juice can be used as invisible ink, so in their minds, the logic extended to their faces. That’s genuinely what they thought.
Professor Dunning was fascinated. If someone can be so completely wrong while being so incredibly confident, what does that say about human judgment? The resulting research revealed something both hilarious and alarming:
The less someone knows about a subject, the more they believe they’re an expert on it. Or as Dunning summarized: “Incompetent people lack the skills to recognize their own incompetence.”
In other words, some people are so uninformed that they’re unaware of how uninformed they are. And so the Dunning Kruger Times became the perfect name for a parody site designed to lure in the overconfident and underinformed.
Which now brings us back to Trump.
A Feedback Loop of Ignorance
The President of the United States repeated a fake story written as satire, hosted on a site whose very name is a psychological descriptor for people who are unaware of their own ignorance.
You truly can’t script irony like this.
But the real concern isn’t that Trump personally fell for a parody site; it’s that millions of people are primed to follow along, believing any claim that flatters their biases, no matter how absurd.
No, Obama is not getting royalties from the ACA.
No, that’s not how American law functions.
And yes, the sheer confidence with which Trump promoted the claim reveals more about how the Dunning–Kruger effect works than any academic paper ever could.
The Bigger Picture
Trump’s post isn’t just wrong, it’s a case study in why misinformation spreads so easily:
- People trust claims that reinforce what they already want to believe.
- They rarely investigate the source.
- Satire and reality have collapsed into one confusing digital soup.
- Public figures with massive platforms amplify nonsense faster than facts can catch up.
If the former president is reading parody sites as if they’re investigative journalism, imagine what his supporters are consuming. Imagine which of their beliefs are grounded in equally fictional nonsense.
The lemon-juice bank robbers may have unwittingly launched an entire field of psychology, but at least they aren’t running the country.