Do we like Barack Obama?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A strong, well-documented record on LGBTQ+ rights, one big public-promise miss, and no court cases or credible misconduct allegations in what we read.
You know the bio: two terms as president, and now the party's favourite big gun. We'll skip the retelling and go straight to the question you actually asked. On LGBTQ+ rights the record is strong. He signed the law letting gay and lesbian troops serve openly in December 2010, his administration stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and he endorsed same-sex marriage in May 2012, after Joe Biden did.
It wasn't a straight line, mind. Activists thought he was too cautious in his first term, and he didn't back marriage until 2012. On the other side, Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation called the approach “an aggressive and unnecessary culture war”, and some evangelicals said their religious liberty was in jeopardy. The Human Rights Campaign counted more than 125 policy changes and over 250 openly LGBTQ+ federal appointees, and he made the Stonewall Inn the first national monument to LGBTQ+ rights.
The honesty check is more mixed than the legacy. PolitiFact rated 500 of his statements by January 2014: 46 per cent True or Mostly True, 27 per cent Half True and 27 per cent Mostly False or worse. The big miss was “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it”, which PolitiFact had called Half True earlier, then named its 2013 Lie of the Year once millions of plans were cancelled. That's one big public-promise miss, not a pattern of grift.
As for scandals, there's no court case against him in what we read. The noise comes from the other direction. In July 2025 Donald Trump accused Obama of treason over the 2016 election, without evidence, after a criminal referral from intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard. Obama's office called the claims “ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction” and pointed to a 2020 bipartisan Senate report. Nothing in the pages we read shows any charge.
The ugliest recent episode landed in February 2026. A video on Trump's Truth Social account put the Obamas' faces on primates for about a second, and bipartisan outrage followed. Senator Tim Scott called it “the most racist thing I've seen out of this White House”, and the White House blamed a staffer's error and took the post down. Obama responded on a podcast without naming Trump, saying “there doesn't seem to be any shame about this” in public discourse.
On work and company, the picture is clean. His production company Higher Ground is winding down its Netflix deal and moving to an independent model, including an animated series with Disney, per theGrio's June report. Nothing in the pages we read ties him to anyone pushing harm.