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Thanks, Obama is anInternet meme both genuinely andsatirically used in regard topolicies pursued byBarack Obama, thePresident of the United States from 2009 to 2017.

The saying first appeared in 2009 using thehashtag#thanksobama in atweet about President Obama's policies. Three months later, it was used in ademotivational poster.^[2]

Shortly after theRepublicans gained control of theHouse in theU.S. midterm election of 2010,liberals andDemocrats repurposed the meme to blame Obama satirically for disparate societal or economic ills.^[2][3] One notable^[4] example came in 2012, when a picture of a man spilling food with the "Thanks Obama" caption was popular. In December 2012, the/r/thanksobamasubreddit was created.^[5]

By 2015, it seemed the meme had run its course^[2] after Obama used it in aBuzzFeed video.^[6] Obama himself revived it in 2016, using it to poke fun at his critics^[7] and to thank a supporter who, during a speech, yelled out at and thanked him for $2 gas.^[8]

On the January 19, 2017 episode ofThe Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Obama's last full day in office,Stephen Colbert'soriginal conservative character fromThe Colbert Report used the phrase to express gratitude to Obama for helping the Republican Party find a message of united opposition against him and succeedelectorally again, only to later plead in fear for Obama to stay in office.^[9]

In 2022, the Twitter account for PresidentJoe Biden (who had served asvice president in the Obama administration) posted the phrase in response to a tweet by Obama acknowledging the passage of theInflation Reduction Act.^[10]

• Let's Go Brandon – slogan which similarly gained popular use through viral memes to criticize thepresidency of Joe Biden
• List of United States political catchphrases

• 2009 quotations
• Barack Obama controversies
• Internet memes introduced in 2009
• Political Internet memes introduced from the United States

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from April 2020