Did Barack Obama "just cut the ribbon on a $150 million free education and health campus, entirely funded by his own pocket, without a single tax dollar."? Did President Donald Trump? Did Secretary of State Marco Rubio? No, none of them did: The made-up stories are among dozens cranked out by Vietnam-based publishers building traffic on Facebook with stories attractive to fans of Obama, Trump and Rubio. There is no news coverage of what would, if real, be a widely-reported event.
One version of the stories appeared in a Dec. 9, 2025 Facebook post (archived here) under the title "OBAMA OFFICIALLY OPENS $150 MILLION "PROMISE CAMPUS" ON SOUTH SIDE CHICAGO". It opened:
December 6, 2025 -- Barack Obama just cut the ribbon on a $150 million free education and health campus, entirely funded by his own pocket, without a single tax dollar.
On 42 acres in the middle of the South Side, "Promise Campus" includes:
- Tuition-free high school for 1,200 students
- Completely free maternal and child health center
- Paid job training institute
- Community farm, library, 5,000-seat auditorium
Standing in front of hundreds of local children, Obama said a sentence that made the whole hall pause because it was so real, so straightforward -- and the next part he said made the press whisper to each other: "What is he implying?"
He ended with his signature smile:
"Promise Campus will say one thing... 'Yes we can' -- but in a big Chicago accent."
The campus opens in January 2026. The South Side has just changed its tune -- and people are still talking about Obama's mysterious line on stage.
#BarackObama #FoxNews #usareels
Here's what that post looked like on Facebook at the time this fact check was written:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of post at https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=122214157940096851&set=a.122211803204096851.)
Lead Stories and other fact checkers have documented a surge in fake news from Facebook pages and websites managed from Vietnam in 2025. The fan pages use fake images, videos and text to draw in social media users, building traffic and, sometimes, profiting from the ads that increased traffic brings. The cheap, mass-reproduced content and use of social media targeting tools can make these "Made-For-Advertising" pages and websites profitable. Some pages and sites also seek to trick readers into clicking off-site links to malvertising that mines personal information from users.
The "Promise Campus" stories follow the template:
Recycled, nearly verbatim, stories
Here is a comparison graphic showing the same fake story, recycled with different heroes to appeal to different audiences:
(Image source: Lead Stories graphic with wording copied verbatim from the Freedom League, News Stream USA and Red Bull Racing News posts on Facebook.)
The link to the post about Obama is at the top of this fact check. Here is the link to one version of the posts about Trump (archived here). Here is the link to one version of the posts about Rubio (archived here).
No legitimate news outlets reported a "Promise Campus" launch
Obama, Trump and Rubio are among the most prominent politicians in the U.S. and a $150 million project launched by any one of them would be newsworthy. Using keyword searches (archived here) in the Google News index of thousands of news sites, Lead Stories found zero stories about a "Promise Campus" launched by Obama, Trump or Rubio, in Chicago or Miami.
Originating in Vietnam
Lead Stories pulled the Page Transparency disclosure for all three Facebook pages, which the graphic below shows, all are managed from Vietnam:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshots of Facebook page transparency information for the Freedom League, News Stream USA and Red Bull Racing News Facebook pages.)
Stories like these have been spreading at epidemic-level speed in the months since Meta fired its American fact checkers (including Lead Stories) in early 2025, but we are still on the case. We have published more than 50 debunks (archived here) in recent months, targeting hundreds of these fake posts.
While a legitimate fan page could be administered from anywhere in the world, the country of Vietnam is the common factor that connects most of these fake celebrity posts.
Fake News is global
This is not just an American problem. The Netherlands fact-checking organization Nieuwscheckers published an investigation (archived here) titled "Vietnamese pulp producers profit from mass-circulation of crime, sports and soap operas via Facebook." They tracked the massive junk news operation to Hanoi.
Maldita.es, a Spanish fact-checking organization published in July 2025 an investigation (archived here) that found Vietnam was the most frequent point of origin of fraudulent Facebook pages that impersonated public transportation agencies in 746 cities and regions worldwide.
Lead Stories teamed with Nieuwscheckers (archived here) in an investigation (archived here) that uncovered a Macedonian fake news network in January 2019.
