Barack Obama compared Donald Trump’s gold makeover of the White House to a Cheesecake Factory on Saturday, telling a Cleveland crowd that Trump has “the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
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The line came during Obama’s first rally of the midterm season, where he was campaigning for two Ohio Democrats: Amy Acton, who is running for governor, and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is trying to win back a seat in the U.S. Senate.
“He seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV,” Obama said. “What’s with the gold?” He followed it up with the Cheesecake Factory comparison, adding, “Just gold everywhere,” as the crowd laughed and applauded.
The joke lands on a real spending story. Trump’s construction projects at the White House have topped $900 million, according to The Hill. That includes tearing down the East Wing to build a massive ballroom, plus gold trim added throughout the Oval Office, from the fireplace mantel to the decorative details on the walls. Trump has defended the gold, telling Laura Ingraham that gold paint can never match the real thing.
Obama has been on this Cheesecake Factory energy for a while. He previously ribbed Trump over the gold decor on Larry David’s HBO Max show “Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.” He even saw it coming back in 2011, when he roasted Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner with a mock image of a Trump White House complete with gold pillars, a giant chandelier and women in bikini tops lounging in the fountain.
His point Saturday went beyond decor. Obama argued that a man this busy remodeling is not spending his time on what voters are dealing with, pointing to foreign wars and grocery prices. “Does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all that time thinking about these issues?” he asked.
He kept the punchlines coming. Obama took a shot at Trump’s old “drain the swamp” slogan, the 2016 promise to clean up Washington, by bringing up the troubled renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, the long pool of water on the National Mall. After the White House unveiled the redone pool in June, visitors spotted green algae growing in the water and new blue paint peeling off the bottom. “Remember that whole thing about drain the swamp? The only thing that got drained was the Reflecting Pool in the National Mall after some no-bid contract got it all messed up,” Obama said. A no-bid contract is a government job handed to a company without letting other companies compete for it.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth caught one too. Hegseth has called parts of the military “low T” and ordered testosterone screenings for male service members under 30. “He’s very focused on important matters like the jawlines and testosterone levels of our troops,” Obama said. “How much time do you think this defense secretary spends looking at himself in the mirror in the morning?”
On Trump’s tariffs, the taxes on imported goods that drive up prices for shoppers, Obama clowned the trade war with Canada. “The big trade war he’s started now is with that well-known evil empire, Canada,” he said. I mean these are the people who gave us maple syrup and Martin Short.
He got serious when he addressed Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Acton’s opponent in the governor’s race, who ran an attack ad featuring Acton’s estranged mother. Trump and JD Vance both defended the ad despite backlash from both parties. “There’s a decency that we should expect out of our public officials,” Obama said. “No office is worth stooping that low.”
Ohio has been tough territory for Democrats. Obama was the last Democratic presidential candidate to win the state, and Ohio has not elected a Democratic governor since 2006. A Bowling Green State University poll released last week found Obama was the only public official with a positive favorability rating among Ohio voters, which explains why Democrats sent him to Cleveland first.
The White House did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on Obama’s remarks.
