Cheesecake Factory joke, USA News (Cleveland, Ohio): Of all the many narrative twists in the American midterm elections, this could end up being the weirdest. Which is worse: a president who devotes much of his time to gilding the White House? Or a former president who trash talks an American fast food institution? On Sunday, Maga supporters took to social media in united fury over Barack Obama’s first appearances on the campaign trail, in Ohio and Michigan. In particular, they took offence at one dig that the former president made, aimed at Donald Trump’s renovations. Depending on whom you ask, Obama’s comment was an arrogant misstep or a comedic bullseye. But both sides appeared to agree it was the talking point of the weekend.
‘What’s up with the gold?’
In Cleveland, Ohio on Saturday, Obama told the crowd “you can tell when an election comes along that just feels a little bit different… people are so ready for something new, so hungry for something better”. He said Trump’s second term had been “two years of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence”. After listing issues including the Iran war, inflation and Ice agent overreach, Obama asked the crowd “Does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues?”
“I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. …The guy’s building a ballroom that’s bigger than the White House. He’s paved over the Rose Garden, put a helicopter pad on the South Lawn. And there’s gold everywhere. What’s up with the gold? Everything, more gold. He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
He repeated the same speech, and the same joke, later that day in Detroit – the city where Evelyn Overton first began baking the cheesecakes that inspired her son’s successful national Cheesecake Factory restaurant franchise. It’s not the first time Obama has ribbed Trump over his White House do-over. On the Larry David comedy series Life Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness earlier this year he remarked, of the show’s Oval Office set, “Nice job on the recreation… Although, I do want to point out, there’s no gold sign on the outside that says Oval Office. I can’t believe I didn’t think of that.”
Trump Responds
Trump, of course, is well-known for his love of gold trimmings, which he has extensively deployed in the White House and beyond. But framing them as a counterpoint to the cost-of-living struggles of ordinary Americans clearly stung. At a rally in Georgia on Saturday night Trump mentioned Obama six times. On Sunday, still stewing, he mentioned Obama three times at a rally in Michigan. He rehearsed a familiar resentment: “You know, Obama got the Nobel Prize about two weeks after he got into office, and he had no idea why he got it. And you know what? He still has no idea. I settled eight wars. And two more coming.”
He then claimed that Americans had lost money on their stock market-dependent 401K retirement plans under Obama, and made money under him. He returned to Obama a third time in the 90-minute speech to claim he had “said we’re not a manufacturing country”. He also took to his Truth Social account to complain Obama was a “grossly incompetent president”.
‘Condescending to regular folks’
Trump supporters on Twitter reacted with widespread indignation to Obama’s joke – incidentally helping send the speech viral by spreading it across right-wing networks. Some accused Obama of snobbery, while others mocked his aesthetic credentials by pointing to his monolithic new Presidential Library in Chicago. Popular conservative commentator Scott Jennings said the former president “makes speeches for $500k a pop [and] hasn’t eaten dinner that costs less than $250 in years” and is “undefeated at condescending to regular folks”.
Anti-Muslim Maga cheerleader Laura Loomer responded to Obama’s joke saying “Cheesecake Factory has good food and it’s a place Americans can afford”. Republican strategist Matt Whitlock also drew comparisons with the presidential library. Trump, who has long obsessed over crowd sizes, also reflected uncomfortably on his comparative pulling power, as a sitting president up against a man who left the White House almost a decade ago. At his rally in Perry, Georgia, Trump claimed he saw Obama’s event in Michigan was empty, though crowd estimates for both events showed sizeable turnouts on both sides.
