Obama's Hilariously Accurate Joke About Trump's White House Renovations Has The MAGA Faithful Up In Arms

President Donald Trump's supporters were unhappy with former President Barack Obama for comparing President Donald Trump's White House renovations to the Cheesecake Factory at a rally on Saturday.

Trump has given significant attention to White House renovations and other pet projects around Washington, D.C. during his second term in office. Trump's White House renovations have already cost nearly $1 billion, according to one analysis.

Chief among these renovations is the White House ballroom. Last year, the president ordered the demolition of the entire East Wing to make way for a 90,000 square-foot ballroom that will dwarf the size of the White House itself, sparking alarm from historical preservationists and the public alike.

The Oval Office has also been significantly revamped since Trump took office in January 2025—it features, among other things, a fireplace adorned with gold cherubs and medallions, surrounded by portraits of American statesmen in ornate gold frames and shelves filled with gilded figurines, urns, and freshly-installed Rococo mirrors.

Speaking at a campaign rally in Ohio on Saturday, Obama asked voters to consider if Trump "spends time at the White House thinking about" issues impacting average Americans.

He added:

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV. 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?"

"He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

You can hear what he said in the video below.

Obama's remarks soon caught the attention of Republican commentators like Mike Whitlock, who called them "Classic Obama snobbery" and added:

"Cheesecake Factory is a great option for people who can't afford a private chef at their Martha's Vineyard estate."

You can see his post below.

CNN's Republican commentator Scott Jennings also responded:

"Makes speeches for 500k a pop. Hasn’t eaten dinner that costs less than $250 in years. Has never been in a Cheesecake Factory. Undefeated at condescending to regular folks. Will always be known for a presidency that ushered in the Trump era to begin with."

You can see his post below.

Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, referring to Obama as "Barack Hussein," also weighed in:

"Cheesecake Factory has good food and it’s a place Americans can afford. We can’t all be like you and big Mike. You know, with private 5 star chefs who end up drowning and dying while naked in 2 feet of water at our Martha’s Vineyard mansions."

You can see her post below.

Others saw exactly what Obama was getting at.

At no point did any of the Republicans who jumped to Trump's defense bring up that Trump is a billionaire who has shown he doesn't care about Americans' concerns about the cost of living.

Last year, insisting prices are down despite rising inflation, Trump claimed that affordability "doesn't mean a thing to anybody." He went on to accuse Democrats of crafting a "fake narrative" and "con job" to trick the American people into not voting for Republicans.

Trump previously dismissed the concerns of a MAGA voter who begged him to fulfill his campaign promise to lower the price of groceries. Trump, responding to the North Carolina woman, said, "I think of groceries, you know, it's an old-fashioned word, but it's a beautiful word," and nonetheless insisted that "beef, we have to get down, but we've got prices way down."

Trump said that under his administration, the U.S. has seen "the biggest reduction in costs in the history of that chart or whatever that thing is they do." He also said he doesn't "want to hear a thing about the affordability because right now we're much less."