Tragic Details About Sasha Obama You Never Knew About

Sasha Obama has undergone a stunning transformation over the years. Gone is the 7-year-old girl who moved into the White House in 2009. Now, she's a grown woman with a life of her own, and she's had to weather life's tragedies just like the rest of us. Despite her dad, Barack Obama, having left office in 2017, Sasha remains famous, and the media keeps its eyes trained on her at all times. It's therefore shocking that no one ever knew that Sasha was in a car accident during her father's tenure as president.

Michelle Obama revealed this while making an appearance on the "Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce" podcast in March 2025, saying Sasha was driving, her Secret Service detail in tow, when she got T-boned by another car. "You get this call that Sasha was in an accident, the car was totaled," Michelle recalled, adding that she remembered feeling sorry for the woman who drove the other car, knowing the implications it had for her. Michelle didn't elaborate much on the incident, but from the way she was telling the story, it appeared that Sasha likely walked away from the whole incident with barely a scratch.

Michelle also admitted that she was eager to get her kids out of the White House. "I wanted them to have the freedom of not having the eyes of the world on them," the former first lady said. For Sasha, however, leaving the White House was bittersweet, so much so that she and her sister, Malia Obama, asked their mother to have one more sleepover with their friends before the big move. "It was a lot emotionally," Michelle told Gayle King at Essence Fest in 2019, recalling that Sasha and her sister were in tears on the day they had to move out.

Sasha Obama has had her fair share of controversial moments — these are inevitable when you're the daughter of a former president. But one thing Sasha probably can't stand about fame is the constant rumors doing the rounds about her, whether it's gossip about her mental health or fake stories that have been made up at the former first daughter's expense.

In January 2025, Sasha was spotted in Los Angeles with an armful of books, her eyes downcast, and some pundits immediately speculated that she was upset because of Barack and Michelle Obama's strange behavior that was sending divorce rumors into overdrive. The X user wrote that Sasha was "appearing to be depressed," noting that one of the books she was carrying, "Bewilderment" by Richard Power, features "themes of loss, parental angst and resilience," and that Sasha was likely reading this in response to her parents' supposed troubled marriage. It must be incredibly tough when people start making assumptions about your mental health when you're photographed without a big smile on your face.

This wasn't the first time Sasha was subject to a rumor that sent the internet into a tailspin. In December 2024, the former first daughter was the subject of a sensational story that claimed she'd been forcefully removed from Reagan Washington Airport after staff failed to recognize who she was and became suspicious that a Black woman had managed to afford a seat in business class. The story was entirely false but got a lot of traction on social media platforms before it was ultimately debunked. In a similar stunt, someone made up the claim that Sasha had been expelled from her high school in 2018 because of a "racist anti-white rant," per PolitiFact. This, too, was a fabrication.