Misleading Claims Linking Obama`s Usual Physical Characteristics to the Death of their family Chef

The death of former US president Barak Obama’s family chef, Tafari Campbell, 45, has been creating stories in social media and mainstream media for around a week. According to many media reports, the cause of the death was mentioned as drowning while the chef was paddleboarding in the upscale Massachusetts town of Martha’s Vineyard. Within these circumstances, there are conspiracy theories that try to convince the death was suspicious, and even it can be a murder involving Barak Obama himself.

Social Media Posts

Social media posts shared alongside a photo of Barak Obama state that the former US president had bandages on his fingers and a black eye during his first public appearance after the chef's death, hence questioning the reasons in the wake of the death of Obama's family chef.

Facebook | Archived

Users commented on it like below.

We decided to do a fact-check on this.

Fact Check

We did a reverse image search for the above images and discovered that the photos were published on the Daily Mail website on 28th July, few days after the dead body of the late chef was recovered from a lake, with the headline, “Barack Obama pictured playing golf while wife Michelle hits the tennis courts on Martha's Vineyard for the first time since the death of their chef Tafari Campbell.” The Daily Mail article can be read here. Archived

However, this is not the first time that Obama's first-time playing golf with bandaged fingers. Even in the past, Obama has played Golf several times with wrapped fingers, and one such occasion can be found in this Daily Mail article published a few years here. Archived Some more occasions of Obama playing golf with bandages on his fingers can be read here, here, and here.

And using tapes/bandages to protect one’s fingers is a habit among many golf players. This practice has technical and physiological reasons, which can be read here. Archived

So, it's clear that taping the fingers is not a strange thing in golf.

The conversation about Obama's black eye is also not a new one. It's more than a decade-old discussion. Obama's eyes look different in front of the camera at certain times. An article in 2012 about that can be read here. Archived.

According to the above data, it's clear that the black eye and bandaged fingers in golf matches are usual characteristics of Obama and not something new or strange.

What Police Says about the Chef’s Death

The Massachusetts Police said in a statement that Martha's Vineyard police and fire agencies responded to a call for a male paddle boarder who had gone into the water, at the Great Pond in the vicinity of Turkeyland Cove and appeared to struggle to stay on the surface briefly, and then submerged and did not resurface.

They added that the paddle boarder is a 43-year-old male, and another was on the pond with him at the time and observed the late chef going under the water. They also added that the investigations are still underway.

And also we noticed that the Police had announced that President and Mrs Obama were not at the residence at the moment of the chef's death(accident).

As per the current investigations by the US authorities, it was an accident when Obama's chef was paddling boarding. We will update the article according to the Massachusetts Police announcements in the future.

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