Obama says he was a Cheesecake Factory regular for a decade in retort to Trump

Former President Barack Obama on Wednesday continued an unusual war of words over the Cheesecake Factory with President Donald Trump, marking the latest development in a battle over White House renovations that turned into a debate about the restaurant.

The saga began over the weekend when Obama mocked Trump’s effort to build a ballroom at the White House, saying the project resembled Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi palaces that were famously littered with gold decor. Trump has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory— it’s just gold everywhere,” Obama said during a pit stop in Ohio.

Trump hit back on Monday, saying he was attempting to restore the White House after Obama left it “filthy, dirty, and broken.” The president’s rebuke prompted another comeback from Obama later in the week, as he ripped Trump’s team for responding to the ribbing.

“They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke, not to inflation, but to that joke,” Obama said during a campaign rally in Georgia, referring to replies from Trump, the White House, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to his initial remarks. “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.”

At the rally, Obama claimed he often went to the Cheesecake Factory when his children were young.

“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?” he told supporters at the campaign event for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA). “I lived at Chuck E. Cheese and California Pizza Kitchen and the Cheesecake Factory. That was my jam for about a decade.”

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Obama’s comments come after Trump defended the ballroom project as he rallied supporters at a Mississippi rally Monday, saying the way the former Democratic president allegedly left the White House was reflective of how he handled the United States during his time in the Oval Office.

“The White House is a symbol of America, and when it’s dirty, filthy, dirty, and broken, when the windows are cracked, when the exterior monument — they call them monuments on the outside — when they’re good on one side but missing on the other side of a window, people notice that,” Trump said. “I would try and explain that to a guy like Obama, but he wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t understand. The White House has to be clean, pristine, beautiful.”