Obama is getting under Trump’s skin – and loving every minute

It was supposed to be a Democratic rally in Georgia to boost Senator Jon Ossoff’s re-election in the upcoming midterm polls. Instead, it turned into a roast of Donald Trump, hosted by his predecessor, Barack Obama. The former president taunted Trump with so many zingers, it could have been an episode of The Daily Show. To roars of laughter, Obama mocked Trump’s enraged response to his gag earlier in the week that he had “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory”, referring to the garish US restaurant chain. “They mobilised a whole of government response to that joke,” said Obama, incredulous. “Not to inflation, but to that joke. “The White House even called the Secretary of the Treasury. This is the man who is in charge of the economy. “The person who’s supposed to be figuring out how to make your life more affordable. The guy who’s supposed to be figuring out how to lower inflation. And reduce interest rates. They told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory”. Unbelievably, it was true. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had indeed dined at a Cheesecake Factory and went on Fox News to mock Obama’s presidential library in Chicago as looking like “Darth Vader’s tomb”. Trump’s clapback was far from a mic drop. Speaking in Mississippi on Monday, the best he could do was petulantly observe that Cheesecake Factory was a “very successful company”. “He [Obama] doesn’t like successful companies,” sniffed the President. Shorts Sensing he had hit a nerve, Obama expanded on his theme at Wednesday’s rally, claiming the President was “spending time super-gluing gold medallions to the mantel in the Oval Office”. “He is literally doing arts and crafts while we are fighting a war and trying to deal with out-of-control prices,” added Obama. It has cemented his place for Democrats when it comes to major elections: their Dunker-in-Chief. For a few weeks before each major US election, the former president sheds his intellectual, cautious and professorial personality and becomes a no-holds barred comedian whose job is to mercilessly taunt one man: Trump. It’s not just that Obama is good at it, he is clearly enjoying himself – and is absolutely getting under Trump’s skin. The first shots between the two men came last week when Obama torched Trump for the “cruelty and chaos” during his second administration. Donald Trump points to the construction site of the White House ballroom this month. Obama has criticised the President’s controversial renovation plans (Photo: Kylie Cooper/Reuters) Trump, of course, took the bait and posted on Truth Social that Obama was a “grossly incompetent President”. But that paled in comparison to Obama’s comments last Saturday, when he said that the US has never had a President “excel so wildly at just straight-up grifting”. Then Obama made the comparison between the White House and a Cheesecake Factory, prompting outrage from Republicans and a rebuke from Trump, who said he had been a “lousy President”. Obama and Trump have a long and complicated history going back more than 15 years, when the former was still president and the latter was touting the racist “birther” conspiracy. At the time, Trump was doing a dry run for his presidential campaign by claiming that Obama was not born in the US, a baseless theory that nonetheless generated years of headlines. The two men have tussled numerous times since then and Obama told a podcast in June that Trump has an “obsession” with him. “I have a room in his head – a suite in his head,” Obama said. But Obama hasn’t always been the one to come out on top. In 2011, when he was still president, Obama took one of his earliest and most brutal swipes at Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington. He told the crowd that they could “put this birth certificate matter to rest”, referring to the birther conspiracy, and get back to “focusing on the issues that matter”. “Like, did we fake the Moon landing?” Obama said with biting sarcasm, prompting a forced smile from his nemesis. “What really happened in Roswell?” continued Obama to howls of laughter. “And where are Biggie and Tupac?” After that, Trump is said to have made his mind up to run for the presidency, which he did in 2015. On that occasion, at least, Trump was the one who had the last laugh.