Trump Answers Obama's "Cheesecake Factory" White House Jab: "That Just Shows Why You Were A Lousy President"

President Trump on Monday answered Barack Obama's weekend jab that the renovated White House looks like a Cheesecake Factory, telling reporters at Joint Base Andrews before a campaign trip to Mississippi: "For you to say it's a Cheesecake Factory - that just shows why you were a lousy president."

At a campaign stop for Democrats on Saturday, Obama told supporters Trump "should be on HGTV" given his focus on construction. "He's got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory," he added, per the Post.

Trump called Obama "not a smart guy" and said "only a stupid person would run the country like that." He claimed Obama let the White House fall into disrepair over his eight years: "He doesn't notice dirt and filth that hadn't been cleaned, where the walls hadn't been cleaned for years. He doesn't notice areas that haven't been painted." Raw Story reports he spent more than three minutes defending the work.

The work includes tearing down the East Wing to build a ballroom, repainting the North Portico columns, paving over the Rose Garden and adding gold wall fixtures to the Oval Office, the Post notes. "I've taken care of the White House. I fixed it with the finest artisans in the world," Trump said, adding that the building "has to be maintained properly."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent took the joke to lunch. He visited a Cheesecake Factory in Washington on Monday and turned the insult back on Obama's presidential library, which he said looks like "Darth Vader's tomb," and invited "the Martha's Vineyard set" to give the chain a try.

The library on Chicago's South Side has taken its own ribbing. The towering, disk-shaped concrete-and-stone building has been mocked as the "Obamalisk" and likened to the Death Star. The Obamas own a home on Martha's Vineyard, which has no Cheesecake Factory outlet.