Former President Barack Obama is finally addressing Donald Trump’s repeated attacks head-on, joking during a new appearance on “All The Smoke” that he clearly has more than a little space in Trump’s mind.
During the interview with Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Barnes pointed out that the “leader of this current administration is still very fascinated” with Obama and his family, despite Obama being out of office for nearly a decade. Obama did not dodge the moment.
“Look, you gotta ask him what it is, the obsession,” Obama said. “I obviously, you know, have a room in his head…A suite in his head.”
Obama then explained why he finds Trump’s continued focus on him unusual, especially for someone currently in power.
“When I was president, the last thing I had time to do was worry about what somebody said, somebody said, or what my predecessor did, they’re gone,” Obama said. “I got work to do.”
He added, “The idea that I’d be worrying about somebody who came before and me trying to measure, you know, like what’s he done today. Look, constantly worrying about that is a strange thing to me. It shows me somebody who’s not focused on the American people and the job they’re supposed to do.”
Obama’s comments come after years of Trump publicly targeting him. Before entering the White House, Trump helped push the false “birther” conspiracy questioning whether Obama was born in the United States, a claim he eventually walked back in 2016 after years of fueling it, according to Reuters.
The attacks continued after Trump became president. In 2017, Trump accused Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower during the 2016 election, but the Justice Department later said there was no evidence to support that claim, Time reported at the time.
More recently, Trump’s Truth Social activity has again put Obama in the center of his political messaging. In May 2026, Trump shared a post calling for Obama’s arrest and accusing him of treason without evidence. In February, an offensive post depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as primates was deleted after bipartisan backlash, with Trump later saying he would not apologize.
Obama, meanwhile, has been publicly focused on legacy, civic engagement and the opening of the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, which Reuters described as an $850 million development on the city’s South Side.
His “All The Smoke” response may be one of his sharpest yet: not just calling out Trump’s fixation, but framing it as a distraction from the presidency itself.
