Claim: President Obama has proposed a redesign for the U.S. flag.
 | FALSE: President Obama has proposed a new design for the U.S. flag. |
 | TRUE: Image shows a stylized U.S. flag print offered for sale by the Obama campaign in 2012. |
Examples: [Collected via Facebook, July 2015]
Where does this come from?
Obama Just Announced He Is Going to Redesign America's Flag
Origins: On 5 April 2015, the disreputable American News web site engaged in their usual practice of posting old news under misleading, sensationalized clickbait headlines when they published an article titled "BREAKING: Obama
Just Announced He Is Going To Redesign America's Flag to THIS." That "news" was neither "BREAKING" nor accurate, however: the underlying story was from September 2012, and the "THIS" referred to was a print of a stylized U.S. flag design offered for sale to supporters by Barack Obama's 2012 re-election campaign, not a proposed redesign of the U.S. national flag.
The item in question was a screen print showing a stylized rendition of the
Another print by the same designers ("Our Stripes: Flag Print"), also offered for sale on the Obama campaign site, featured a similar design in the shape of an outline of the United States:
The pages for both these items were removed from the Obama campaign site's online store about four days after they went up.
Banners created by placing a candidate's image, name, or other representation on the U.S. flag as a form of campaign promotion have a long history in American politics and were quite common from the 1840s to the 1880s, as illustrated by this example from 1860:
Last updated: 19 July 2015