Barack Obama told a crowd of 3,500 to 4,000 people at the Discovery Center of Clayton County, just south of Atlanta, that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are “not serious people” and that voters are paying the price for it. He was campaigning in Georgia for Senator Jon Ossoff and gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms in the final week of the midterm election campaign.
Obama returned to a joke he made the previous week comparing Trump’s gilded White House renovations to Saddam Hussein decorating a Cheesecake Factory. He said the Saddam Hussein part did not bother Trump, but the Cheesecake Factory mention did.
“They mobilized a whole government response to that joke,” Obama said. He said the White House even called the secretary of the treasury, the official charged with bringing down inflation, and told him he should hold a press conference in front of the restaurant chain.
Obama pushed back on claims from Republicans that the joke was elitist. He said he is the father of two daughters and asked the crowd whether he could have survived their childhood without going to the Cheesecake Factory. He then turned to the cost of living, arguing the administration spends its energy on media squabbles while household bills stay high.
Source: The Guardian
