Let’s call it the great food fight of the 2026 midterm elections. It all could have been so easily won by Donald Trump, the undisputed heavyweight champion of fast-food populism.
But this was a one-sided food fight that began in Cleveland this week, where Obama unleashed a viral one-liner targeting Trump’s obsessive, multi-million-dollar redecoration of the White House. Mocking Trump’s brand-new granite helipad, oversized ballroom, and ubiquitous gold leafing, Obama remarked that the current administration has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
When I heard that line, I blurted out to no one in particular, “Oh my God, do I miss Obama!” As someone who spent a career in PR and politics, I knew instantly that the line had what we call in industry vernacular “legs” — Manute Bol-sized.
It was a wildly brilliant double-jab. Metaphorically, it painted Trump’s aesthetic as gauche and gaudy, and alarmingly authoritarian. It also targeted Trump’s misplaced obsession with renovation and real estate instead of doing his day job as president.
Yet, rather than laughing it off, defending himself against the authoritarianism charge, or bragging about his cheap culinary tastes, Trump took the insult entirely to heart, going way overboard in responding to a comedic line. He could even have ignored it.
But no, the wildly demented and dementia-ridden Trump — and the MAGA crowd — went nuts.
Trump fixated with almost pathological intensity on defending his renovations, first in a long-winded press gaggle and then in a six-minute diatribe at a campaign stop in Mississippi. I love, love, love watching Trump get visibly rattled.
He defended the “beautiful marble” and painstakingly replaced columns of the White House. He declared that the Cheesecake Factory is a “very successful company” and that Obama simply “doesn’t like successful companies” because he is a “lousy president.” He even said Obama “doesn’t notice dirt and filth.”
Metaphorically, if I may add, Trump is right. Obama’s administration was largely scandal-free, proving he has the smarts to stay away from dirt and filth, unlike the muckish Trump.
So, putting my PR and campaign media hats on, I got to thinking. All Trump needed to do was respond to Obama’s tasty, tantalizing trail tease with a simple, devastating counterpunch. He could log onto social media or step up to a microphone at Joint Base Andrews and declare that while he loves the Cheesecake Factory, he prefers the more economical, everyman McDonald’s.
He could have shown up at the press gaggle or rally, not chomping at the bit, but chomping on a Big Mac. Instead, Trump got triggered. And in doing so, he walked directly into Obama’s trap.
If Trump’s personal meltdown wasn’t enough, the administration’s coordinated response devolved into abject lunacy. In an obtuse attempt to frame Obama as an out-of-touch snob, the White House dispatched an out-of-touch snob of its own: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who held a bizarre, impromptu photo-op outside a Washington, D.C., Cheesecake Factory.
Instead of working in his office to help fix inflation — part of his job — billionaire Bessent emerged from the restaurant and goofily announced that he had just eaten an “excellent” French dip cheeseburger. He snidely advised the “Martha’s Vineyard set” to give the chain a try.
That’s when my PR head popped off my already sore, flu-shot shoulders. “What was that?” was all I could think. The optics of that stunt were dismaying.
The visual was about as counterproductive as you could get: a billionaire tasked with steering an economy burdened by inflation, standing outside a chain restaurant to defend a president’s gold-plated ballroom.
Obama knew he had gotten Trump’s goat and goaded him into a losing food war. Sensing that he had located Trump’s ultimate weak spot, Obama didn’t let up. On Wednesday, at a roaring rally in Georgia, Obama leaned into the absurdity, leaving crowds in stitches.
“I am the father of two daughters,” Obama grinned, asserting his own middle-class credentials. “Do you think I could have survived their childhood without going to the Cheesecake Factory? That was my jam for about a decade.”
Then Obama went in for the kill, pointing out that while Trump and his billionaire surrogates were mobilizing a “whole-of-government response” to defend a restaurant chain from a joke, they were ignoring the grinding economic reality facing ordinary families.
And that is where the literal meets the metaphorical. Trump has long used his love for McDonald’s as a visual shorthand for being a man of the people. He’s a “regular guy” who lunches on one Quarter Pounder, one Big Mac, one Filet-O-Fish, and an order of French fries.
Can I just stop here for a minute and say that eating a meal like that in one sitting has ruined my appetite for the rest of the day.
But while Trump is busy gorging himself on McDonald’s and obsessing over White House tile repairs, the fast food he uses as a populist prop has become painfully expensive. Under the weight of post-pandemic inflation, even a basic McDonald’s meal has become a luxury that many working-class Americans struggle to justify.
By prioritizing a multi-day PR war over the Cheesecake Factory instead of addressing the real economic anxiety surrounding rising grocery, and dining bills, Trump dropped his populist preaching — or his version of it. Obama exposed the gluttony and gilded excess that define Trump’s presidency.
This is an administration run by billionaires that uses the language of the middle class to defend the gold and gaudy tastes of a dictator — albeit one who knows dirt and filth — while ordinary people wonder how they’re going to pay for their next drive-thru order.
All that said, Trump’s love for McDonald’s probably would not have saved him anyway. There’s that, and the fact that Trump is becoming so used to being an out-of-touch dictator that he chose to defend his authoritarian palace and helipad instead of addressing Americans’ inability to pay their bills.
In this food fight, Obama served up the better food for thought, and Trump handed him a win on a proverbial silver platter.
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