Over the past year rumors have been swirling that Barack and Michelle Obama are heading for divorce. According to these rumors, Barack and Michelle have been living “separate lives” for quite some time.
Now, Barack is being slammed for a “headache-inducing” new addition to his already-panned Chicago presidential library. This comes as rampant divorce rumors continue to plague both him and Michelle.
Obama Presidential Center Backlash
The Obama Presidential Center is finally set to open in June. It consists of several buildings that are sprawled across a 20-acre campus located within Chicago’s historic Jackson Park.
The campus includes an eight-story museum made of granite that stands at 225 feet tall. This building features four floors of exhibits from the Obama presidency and a Sky Room observation deck. The outside of the building is set to depict words taken from Barack’s speech marking the 50th anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches.
Unfortunately for Barack, however, this building is now being slammed on social media after an architecture critic pointed out just how difficult this text is to read. The words are engraved on two sides of the building, meaning that those who look at it from one angle find that it has mismatched run-over lines.
Social media users immediately agreed, saying that the building is an “eye-sore” that gives them a “headache” just by looking at it.
Social Media Sounds Off
Chicago Sun-Times critic Lee Bay wrote in an online review that the words look like a “dummy” placeholder text on the building.
“I’m outside the Obama Center museum tower right now. The new letters – an excerpt from Obama’s Selma speech – are a tough read to me, giving off the lorem ipsum vibes,” Bay wrote.
Other social media users were quick to agree.
“I gave up after developing a headache three lines from the top,” one social media user commented. “The dyslexic in me is not amused.”
“It looks like a super max prison,” another added. A third social media user wrote, “Not ideal. It looks horrible. Chicago the City of great architecture. Just sad.”
“My eyes still can’t track it with the tight leading, the broken words, and the lines between. Horrible,” yet another social media user stated.
It should be noted that the Obama Foundation center cost around $850 million to construct.
Obama Divorce Rumors
This comes at a difficult time for both Barack and his wife Michelle, who he’s been married to since 1992. Indeed, over the past year, they’ve been plagued by rampant rumors that they are divorcing.
These divorce rumors escalated in a big way back in January of last year, when Michelle skipped both the funeral of Jimmy Carter and the inauguration of Donald Trump. She was the only living former First Lady to miss each of these events. This forced Barack to attend both events alone.
“I have been hearing this rumor that the Obamas are getting a divorce by reputable people,” political commentator Meghan McCain said on reporter Tara Palmeri’s podcast in 2025. “I’m not talking about TMZ, I’m not talking about Perez Hilton, although I love him, he’s my friend.”
“I’m talking about like very serious journalists telling me that they’re hearing that the Obama divorce rumors are true,” she continued.
“We’ve heard that for a long time,” replied Tara, who has long covered Washington politics. “Like I just heard that they live separate lives.”
Listen to Meghan and Tara talk more about this in the clip below.
Michelle Accused Of ‘Really Disliking’ Barack
Michelle launched her IMO podcast back in March of last year. Since then, Michelle has used it to bash Barack and air his dirty laundry seemingly every chance she gets.
In fact, Michelle has complained about Barack so many times on her podcast that the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson has claimed that the former First Lady “really dislikes her husband, and it’s super obvious.”
“I’m not just saying that to be catty,” Tucker explained. “I think I’m trying to feel compassion for her but her hostility toward the guy is unbelievable.”
Tucker’s fellow former Fox News host Megyn Kelly was quick to agree. She pointed out that “everything Michelle says about her husband is negative.”
“I almost never say negative things about Doug,” Megyn added, referring to her own husband Doug Brunt. “He’s not perfect but when I think about him, I don’t immediately go to whatever is negative. I go to what’s positive and what I love about him.”
The Obamas Respond
Back in July, Barack appeared on Michelle’s IMO podcast. There, they desperately tried to shoot down the escalating divorce rumors.
“There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting my man,” Michelle claimed. “And we’ve had some really hard times. So we had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I’m married to.”
“These are the kinds of things that I just miss, right?” Barack chimed in to add. “So I don’t even know this stuff’s going on. And then somebody will mention it to me and I’m all like, ‘what are you talking about?'”
Unfortunately for the Obamas, however, many are still not buying their claims that their marriage is still going strong.
Given these escalating divorce rumors, backlash over his presidential center is likely the last thing that Barack wants to be dealing with right now. Only time will tell if the Obama marriage will survive 2026.