Cheesy Banter: Obama, Trump Jabs Continue
Sandra Rhodes · Oct 29, 2026 · 2 min read
Former President Barack Obama kept the jabs coming towards President Donald Trump regarding White House decorations.
Obama spoke at a campaign rally in Georgia Wednesday when he went after Republicans for focusing more on a joke than on the economy.
“They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke, not to inflation, but to that joke,” Obama said. “This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory.”
During a recent campaign stop in Ohio, Obama joked that Trump’s taste in renovations worth a reported $900 million has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory, it’s just gold everywhere.” The former president was referring to the Iraqi palaces that were adorned with gold decor.
Trump hit back by stating the restaurant chain as a “very successful company” and calling Obama “a lousy president.”
“It’s not about money. It’s about seeing. Guys like Obama don’t see it. He doesn’t see dirt, he doesn’t see filth, he doesn’t see broken ornaments on a building,” Trump said. “For you to say it was a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president.”
Trump has directed an overhaul to the Rose Garden and constructed a new granite helipad on the South Lawn. He also added signage in gold.
Obama, stumping for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms in Georgia, dismissed the outcry, saying he’d “heard the president was not happy” with his campaign-trail roast.
“First of all, let me get this on the record. I am the father of two daughters. Do you think I could have survived their childhood without going to the Cheesecake Factory? I lived at Chuck E. Cheese and California Pizza Kitchen and the Cheesecake Factory. That was my jam for about a decade,” Obama said.