Why Obama’s ‘Cheesecake Factory’ joke has infuriated Maga

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 fury over the latest of many narrative twists in the American midterm elections. They were united in taking offence at Barack Obama’s first appearances on the campaign trail, at rallies in Ohio and Michigan, and in particular at one dig the former president made, aimed at Donald Trump’s renovations. Depending on whom you ask, Obama’s zinger 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. The Oval Office has taken on a more golden hue during Trump’s presidency (Photo by ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS / AFP via Getty Images) “He’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you.” 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 (his private plane reportedly had gold-plated seat belt buckles). 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 claimed that Americans had lost money on their stock market-dependent 401K retirement plans under Obama, and made money under him (in fact both presidents oversaw stock market booms, of a roughly comparable size, and neither had much to do with White House policies). Donald Trump spoke at a campaign rally in Port Huron, Michigan, on Sunday (Photo by Brendan SMIALOWSKI / AFP via Getty Images) He returned to Obama again to claim he “said we’re not a manufacturing country”, possibly a reference to a 2016 debate in which Obama said “some of those jobs of the past are just not going to come back”. 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, which Fox presenter Jimmy Failla called an “intergalactic porta potty“. 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”. “Has never been in a Cheesecake Factory. Undefeated at condescending to regular folks,” he said. The Cheesecake Factory has maintained a dignified silence on the controversy (Photo: The Cheesecake Factory) 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”. She added that his Presidential library “looks like shit… [and] is now serving as a Muslim wedding venue”. Republican strategist Matt Whitlock also drew comparisons with the presidential library, saying “The guy who designed this wizard prison for himself has thoughts on aesthetics?” The Obama Presidential Center in southern Chicago (Photo: Obama.org) Small crowd syndrome 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. It was clearly on his mind on Saturday night: at his rally Trump claimed “I saw Barack Hussein Obama was in Michigan, and the place was empty. And they were saying, ‘Oh, this is a large crowd coming’ [but] the people are trickling through. They don’t talk about my crowds. They never talk about them.” Obama’s crowd at his rally at the Cleveland Public Auditorium was estimated at more than 10,000. There was no official number given for attendance at the Trump rally on Saturday in Perry, Georgia, but one attendee put it at around 5,000. A recent Trump rally in Ohio drew around 4,000 people to a high school gym. Donald Trump gave a speech at a sports stadium in Port Huron, Michigan (Photo by REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst) Trump spoke on Sunday in Port Huron, in an ice hockey rink in a small lakeside town north-east of Detroit on the Canadian border, to an audience estimated at 3,000, with more in an overflow area. At the Cass Technical High School in Detroit, also on Saturday, Obama’s audience was estimated at more than 4,000, also with an overflow area. An estimated 650,000 Americans per day eat at a Cheesecake Factory. The company has not put out a comment on the political debate.