Did former President Barack Obama bar President Trump from 'stepping foot inside the Obama Presidential Center' after a Somali World Cup referee was denied entry to the United States? No, that's not true: A video features Obama with an AI-generated voiceover falsely attributing statements to him. The April interview with Stephen Colbert (aired May 5, 2026) contains no such remarks. Somali referee Omar Artan was denied U.S. entry on June 6, 2026 at Miami International Airport--after the interview aired.
The falsified interview footage appeared in a post (archived here) published on Facebook by Gaius Harriet Konyen on June 13, 2026. It was captioned:
Trump barred a Somali referee from entering the US, and Obama hit back by blacklisting him from his presidential center entirely.
#Trump#obama #worldcup
This is a screenshot from the video:
(Image source: post by Gaius Harriet Konyen on Facebook.)
The fake Obama voiceover in the video has the former president saying:
If Trump dares to bar a Somali referee from entering the U.S., I will bar him from stepping foot inside the Obama Presidential Center. Trump has brought immense shame to America across the globe. Omar Abdulkadir Artan, Africa's top referee held a legitimate diplomatic passport and valid U.S. visa to travel for the tournament yet he was detained and interrogated for 11 hours without cause at Miami airport. U.S. authorities never presented a shred of evidence of wrongdoing and deported him solely for being Somali.
This video was originally uploaded on TikTok (archived here) on June 12, 2026 by @meloneating.whiz. The video has a disclaimer visible in the lower left corner (pictured below) which says, "Creator labeled as AI-generated".
(Image source: post @meloneating.whiz on TikTok.)
There was some delay between when Somali referee Omar Artan was denied entry at the Miami International Airport, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection made a statement, and when FIFA confirmed the identity of the referee in question. A June 9, 2026 ESPN article (archived here) summarizes that timeline:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed Monday that a Somali national who was planning to referee in the World Cup had been denied entry after arriving to Miami International Airport from Istanbul on Saturday. The CBP statement didn't mention the person by name, but FIFA later confirmed it was Artan, who was the only World Cup referee from Somalia.
Lead Stories used Google Lens to search for the pictured interview footage of Obama speaking. Search results pointed to a May 6, 2026 CBS News article which identified this as a Stephen Colbert interview (archived here). A YouTube playlist of nine video clips by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert is titled, "May 5, 2026" (archived here). The posted videos do not specify the date the interview took place, but one video, published as a "bonus clip" on May 13, 2026, begins with Colbert saying, "It's currently April, as we sit down to talk." (archived here). This establishes that the interview took place more than a month before the referee was denied entry to the U.S. None of the playlist's nine video transcripts mention a Somali referee.
A search of Google News for the terms "Obama Somali referee Omar Artan" did not produce any relevant results (archived here).
