Former First Lady Michelle Obama suggested questionable theory linking older male sperm to autism diagnoses.
During a recent episode of her podcast Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast (IMO), the titular host discussed women’s health with her brother Craig Robinson and OBGYN Dr. Sharon Malone.
Obama opened the conversation by asking Dr. Malone whether there was “a connection between aging sperm and birth defects,” then added that Republicans “would cut out research on that.”
Dr. Malone agreed that “There is some anecdotal data that says older sperm.”
Michelle Obama dropped a wild theory on her podcast, suggesting “older sperm” might be linked to autism, not vaccines. Joined by her brother Craig and Eric Holder’s wife, Dr. Sharon Malone, Michelle questioned the science with zero filter.
“They’ll never let that secret out,”… pic.twitter.com/06abeRKPep
— Camus (@newstart_2024) May 29, 2025
She followed with a jab at vaccine skeptics, quipping, “So we should tell some people, maybe it’s the old sperm, maybe it’s not the vaccine that’s causing the autism, you know? Why don’t you look at that?”
“They’ll never let that secret out. That may be the key behind all the defunding everything. Then old men can keep marrying 20-year-olds,” Obama shot back mockingly. “It’s like, ‘I’ll give you the baby you want.’”
Moments later, she turned to the production team and said, “We don’t have to keep that in,” signaling her concern over the potential fallout from the exchange.
While Obama did not name names, the comments appeared to target rival political figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump.
Kennedy, 71, is married to actress Cheryl Hines, who is more than a decade younger. The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary recently pushed back his timeline to find the cause of autism from September to at least March of next year.
Trump, 78, has long been the subject of liberal speculation regarding his youngest son Barron, born when the president was 60.
President Donald Trump’s escalating battle with Harvard University has led to questions about Trump’s personal history with the university. Some have wondered if Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump’s son Barron Trump, 19, was rejected from the university.
Was Barron Trump… pic.twitter.com/emMANzpU3N
— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) May 28, 2025
Critics have frequently spread the unfounded claim that Barron is autistic, an accusation that First Lady Melania Trump categorically rejected in her memoir.
“There is nothing shameful about autism… but Barron is not autistic,” Melania wrote, pushing back against years of social media rumor.
More recently she cleared up speculation about whether Barron had been rejected from Harvard, which Trump biographer Michael Wolff described a running joke among staff inside the White House.
“What do all the universities Trump is targeting have in common?” Wolff wrote on Instagram. “Barron didn’t get into them.”
Melania quickly moved to quash the claim. In a rare public statement through her communications director, she insisted it was “completely false” and clarified, “any assertion that he, or that anyone on his behalf, applied is completely false.”
Wolff didn’t confirm whether Barron had applied, but acknowledged, “That is the joke within the White House… Because they’re like, ‘What is he doing?’”
“This is, you know, this is crazy stuff. Why would this be happening?” he said in reference to Trump’s laser focus on disrupting Harvard and other woke universities. “And then they tell the Barron joke.”
Currently, Barron is enrolled at NYU’s Stern Business School. According to Trump, the 19-year-old had multiple offers but was determined to attend NYU.
In addition to her comments on male fertility, Obama steered the podcast toward abortion and women’s health.
Her remarks followed a comment by Dr. Malone, who accused pharmaceutical companies of neglecting women’s healthcare innovation “because there’s no money to be made.”
According to Michelle Obama, the “least important thing” about a woman’s reproductive system is that “it produces life.”pic.twitter.com/zxbqklcFXX
— Dinesh D’Souza (@DineshDSouza) May 29, 2025
That prompted Obama to claim that systemic neglect has left women vulnerable when making pregnancy-related decisions.
“So many men have no idea about what women go through. Right? We haven’t been researched,” Obama said.
“We haven’t been considered, and it still affects the way a lot of male lawmakers, a lot of male politicians, a lot of male religious leaders think about the issue of choice, as if it’s just about the fetus, the baby,” she continued. “But women’s reproductive health is about our life.”
Her most controversial remark followed shortly after, when she minimized the reproductive system’s natural purpose.
“It’s about this whole complicated reproductive system that does — the least of what it does is produce life,” she asserted.
“It’s a very important thing that it does, but you only produce life if the machine that’s producing it — if you wanna, you know, whittle us down to a machine — is functioning in a healthy, streamlined kind of way,” Obama added.
She claimed that “There is no discussion or apparent connection between the two,” referring to the supposed disconnect between women’s general health and childbearing capacity.
Dr. Malone wrapped the segment with her own pointed take: “A woman must have control over her body, when and if to have a baby, and to decide how that pregnancy should continue.”
The full episode of “Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast” can be seen here: