Jon Stewart spent part of his Monday monologue baffled by which half of Barack Obama’s latest jab at Donald Trump sent the right into a tailspin.
Obama delivered the line Saturday at a Cleveland rally for Ohio Senate candidate Sherrod Brown and gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, mocking the gold accents Trump has added to the White House since returning to office.
“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” Obama quipped.
Stewart told his Daily Show audience he assumed the Saddam Hussein comparison would be the flashpoint and braced for backlash the moment he heard it.
Instead, conservatives zeroed in on the restaurant chain. Fox News host Martha MacCallum accused Obama of elitism, arguing the line explained why Democrats lost middle-class and blue-collar voters. Fox News contributor Kaylee McGhee White, in a clip Stewart aired, said the remark talked down to a popular chain restaurant.
“The part of the comparison that bothered you was the Cheesecake Factory part, not that Saddam Hussein part,” a stunned Stewart said.
He went on to remind viewers that the Cheesecake Factory isn't an actual factory and that no cheesecake jobs were shipped to China.
Trump, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews on Monday, fired back that Obama had ignored years of dirt and filth in the White House and that the joke showed why he was a bad president. Hours later at a rally in Corinth, Mississippi, Trump returned to the subject, telling supporters Obama doesn’t like successful companies.
MS NOW’s Jen Psaki made a similar point to Stewart’s Monday night, mocking the right’s frenzy over the dessert chain.
Stewart argued the outrage was a distraction, saying Trump and congressional Republicans were steering attention away because GOP candidates can’t defend Trump’s record or their refusal to rein him in.
The ballroom at the center of the renovation fight has its own price problem. A March contractor estimate obtained by the Washington Post put the project at $600 million, with roughly half coming from taxpayer-funded sources, despite Trump’s repeated claims that private donors would cover the cost.