What was claimed
President Obama plans to stand in the Kenyan presidential elections.
Our verdict
He doesn’t. This is a joke.
President Obama does not plan to govern Kenya next
23 January 2020
Several Facebook posts have shared what appears to be a report that the former US president Barack Obama intends to run for the presidency of Kenya in 2021.
The report in question comes from a website called WorldNewsDailyReport.com, which carries the strapline “Where facts don’t matter”.
One of the few serious things on the site is the disclaimer: “World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website—even those based on real people—are entirely fictional.”
In short, this claim about President Obama’s ambitions in Kenyan politics is not true; it was invented as a joke. Even so, several commenters on Facebook, and underneath the article itself, seem to be taking it as real.
The false claim that President Obama was born in Kenya, not the US, has been popular for many years. People who believe and spread the idea are often called “birthers”. This new satirical article is one of several that attempt to make a joke out of the phenomenon by exaggerating President Obama’s links to Kenya. The irony may have been too deeply buried in this case.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because he is not running for president in Kenya and the text was taken from a joke article on another website.