Saddam Hussein lived a very extravagant lifestyle, even by dictators’ standards, and famously built himself palaces so overfilled with gold and precious things that instead of looking luxurious they looked tacky and in horrible taste.
Obama joked that Trump’s White House looks like if Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory (Trump and MAGA took it about as well as you can imagine).
The brilliance of the joke is that, while being on the surface about interior design, Obama called Trump a narcissistic dictator getting rich by stealing from his own people. And clearly MAGAs choose to focus their response only on the Cheesecake part of the joke.
The Cheesecake Factory is a restaurant chain. Its decor is intentionally over-the-top.
Saddam Hussein lived a very extravagant lifestyle, even by dictators’ standards, and famously built himself palaces so overfilled with gold and precious things that instead of looking luxurious they looked tacky and in horrible taste.
Obama joked that Trump’s White House looks like if Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory (Trump and MAGA took it about as well as you can imagine).
The brilliance of the joke is that, while being on the surface about interior design, Obama called Trump a narcissistic dictator getting rich by stealing from his own people. And clearly MAGAs choose to focus their response only on the Cheesecake part of the joke.
Thank you so much for explaining this! I felt like I really like the joke / name, but the context made it truly brilliant indeed!