Barack Obama made one joke about President Donald Trump’s gilded White House makeover. Days later, the former president says the Trump team is still fighting it, and he isn’t letting it go either.
Rallying Democrats in suburban Atlanta on Wednesday evening, Obama mocked what he called a “whole of government” response to his line that Trump’s renovations had the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
“They mobilized a whole of government response to that joke, not to inflation, but to that joke,” Obama told the crowd, according to The Guardian and The Hill. “The Saddam Hussein thing didn’t bother him. But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory.”
How a one-liner became a political fight
Obama first made the crack at a campaign stop in Cleveland over the weekend, referring to Trump’s renovations, reported to be worth about $900 million, and the gold decor he has favored. “It’s just gold everywhere,” Obama said.
Trump fired back from the road. He defended the restaurant chain as a “very successful company” and called Obama “a lousy president,” The Hill reported. “For you to say it was a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president,” Trump said. At his own rally in Ohio on Wednesday, Trump insisted the White House was now “more beautiful and in better shape” and claimed Obama “doesn’t understand cleanliness.”
Republicans and White House allies framed the joke as elitist and out of touch. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent even weighed in, speaking to a reporter outside a Cheesecake Factory earlier this week and saying he was a regular there.
“I lived at Chuck E. Cheese”
Obama had a ready answer to the snobbery charge. “I am the father of two daughters. Do you think I could have survived their childhood without going to the Cheesecake Factory?” he said. “I lived at Chuck E. Cheese and California Pizza Kitchen and the Cheesecake Factory. That was my jam for about a decade.”
He also poked at the administration’s choice of messenger. “The White House even called the secretary of the treasury,” Obama said. “The guy who is trying to figure out how to lower inflation… they told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory.”
The real point: prices
Then Obama turned the joke into his closing argument. “Of course, the real problem is the price has gotten so high, a lot of folks can barely afford to go out to eat, so you would think that this administration would be spending time worrying about that,” he said, as quoted by The Hill.
“These are not serious people,” Obama said of Trump and the Republican Party. “They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory.”
He went further on corruption: “We have never seen a president so intent on selling favors,” Obama said, according to The Guardian. “The guy has made billions of dollars while in office.”
Georgia Democrats pile on
Obama was in Georgia to campaign for Sen. Jon Ossoff, former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who is running for governor, and down-ballot Democrats. The Guardian reported that 3,500 to 4,000 people filled the Discovery Center in Clayton County, just south of Atlanta.
Ossoff accused Trump of leading “the most corrupt administration of all time, and everybody knows it.” Sen. Raphael Warnock warned about the effects of deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP nutrition support for children.
With Election Day on November 3, Obama’s message was simple: while the White House argues about a restaurant, voters are still paying more at the checkout line.