The mystery of the death of Tafari Campbell, Barack Obama’s friend and personal chef, continues to deepen as the former president showed up to golf on Friday at the members-only Vineyards Club with a black eye and sporting a bandaged hand.
Barack Obama hit the links while former First Lady Michele Obama played tennis elsewhere on the property. The photos clearly show a bruise or ‘black eye’ under Barack’s left eye as well as bandaged hand. It is known that the former president has wrapped his hand to play golf before, thus allaying some mystery.
The photos of the former president nonetheless fueled speculation about his whereabouts at the time of Campbell’s death.
“Democrats keep telling me that Obama has bandaged his hand to golf before, ok, what about this black eye though?” pundit Dom Lucre asked.
“[J]ust days after his personal chef and friend died in a very mysterious paddle boarding accident, Barack Obama appears to have injured fingers and a black eye,” Travis from Flint remarked. “We still don’t know who the other person was and Obama loves paddle boarding. I think we can all guess what happened at this point!”
Unfortunately, it is not clear what role, if any, Barack Obama had in the circumstances surrounding Campbell’s death.
After initial reports indicated that Barack Obama was not on his estate at the time of death, subsequent reports clarified that he was indeed on Martha’s Vineyard.
The police have fueled the speculation by obscuring the reason for the 911 call, changing the locating of the call, and refusing to identify a second paddleboarder and the alleged female who made the call.
Tafari, aged 45, met with the accident while paddleboarding on the Great Edgartown Pond on last Sunday night. The emergency call reporting his fall and subsequent struggle to resurface was placed at 7:46 pm. While this call was recorded in the logs of the Edgartown Police Department, the reason for the call was left unspecified. In contrast, the reasons for all other calls from the same night were detailed.
The person who was paddleboarding with the Obamas’ personal chef when he drowned near their Martha’s Vineyard estate had tried desperately to save him, according to officials.
The unidentified fellow paddleboarder tried to swim to Tafari Campbell, 45, but “did not reach him in time,” Massachusetts State Police said in a statement, MassLive reported.
The person, who saw Campbell losing his balance and falling into the water, then swam to shore and alerted someone who then called 911, according to the report.
Emergency service dispatches on Martha’s Vineyard also noted that the original 911 call was made by a woman who was on a boat, presumably searching for Campbell, by 8:18 pm.
The identity of this woman, as well as whether she was with Campbell on the paddleboard, remains unknown.
The source of the call is also marked as Wilson’s Landing – a paddleboard launch area situated about two miles from the Obamas’ residence on Turkeyland Cove, contradicting the Massachusetts State Police’s claim that the first call originated from there.
Barack Obama is known himself to be an avid paddleboarder, as numerous reports have noted. In 2022, for example, Obama went paddleboarding in Hawaii with Secret Service protection and wearing a $84 shark-deterrent ankle bracelet.
While no one is directly accusing Barack Obama of foul play, there are questions about what the former president knew about Campbell’s death and when he knew it.