US President Donald Trump gestures at a midterm election campaign rally for incumbent US Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) at an arena in Corinth, Mississippi, US, October 26, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
MS NOW’s Jen Psaki opened her show eight days before the midterms by mocking Republicans’ outrage over a joke former President Barack Obama made about President Donald Trump’s gold-heavy White House renovations.
Psaki played a clip of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outside a Washington Cheesecake Factory, where a Fox Business producer asked about his lunch. “I have what I always had, the French dip cheeseburger,” Bessent said.
The reason it was news, Psaki said, was a rally in Ohio where Obama said Trump “seems very focused on home renovations” and “should be on HGTV,” citing the ballroom, the paved-over Rose Garden, a helipad on the South Lawn and “gold everywhere.” Obama said the White House looks “like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
Trump and his allies, Psaki said, were not bothered by the Saddam Hussein comparison. Instead, they “spun themselves up into a little frenzy” accusing Obama of attacking the Cheesecake Factory and its hardworking customers.
Psaki, a self-described fan of the chain who worked for the Obamas for a decade, said the line “had nothing to do with the quality of the menu” and everything to do with “all of the gold, all of the money making, all of the corruption.”
She said the White House saw an opening, betting that average Americans “could relate to the outrage felt by Treasury Secretary and hedge fund multimillionaire Scott Bessent.”
The real issue, she said, is that Republicans have ginned up the outrage over the Cheesecake Factory line to try to bury Obama's actual point — that Trump is using the federal government to enrich himself while working people suffer.