Obama puts dining-out costs behind his Cheesecake Factory joke
CNN's Georgia rally clip passed a million views as the former president defended the restaurant and questioned Trump's priorities.
CNN
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 1,109,760 views a day, 21 times a normal first day on this channel (53,554).
Obama continues to tease Trump about Cheesecake Factory
Barack Obama offers Cheesecake Factory a defense before returning to the point of his joke: what families can afford, and what draws a response from the White House.
Speaking in Morrow, Georgia, he revisits his comparison of the renovated White House to Saddam Hussein opening a Cheesecake Factory. Then he makes clear that the restaurant itself was not his target. Chuck E. Cheese, California Pizza Kitchen and Cheesecake Factory, he says, were familiar stops while raising his daughters.
The restaurant reminiscence leads into his campaign argument. "...prices have gotten so high, a lot of folks can barely afford to go out to eat," Obama says. He argues that the administration's response to his earlier remarks focused on the decor joke rather than answering his criticism of rising prices and tariffs.
CNN's Short drew an estimated 1.1 million views in its first day, roughly twenty times the channel's usual Shorts start.
Obama saves his distinction for the closing stretch: "The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison." In his telling, it was the Cheesecake Factory reference that caused offense.
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- Channel
- CNN
- Subscribers
- 20,000,000 ▲ 100,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 122,302,449
- Channel views, pace per day
- 18,932,277 (on a normal day: 17,456,753)
- Video published
- October 29, 2026
- Video views so far
- 1,221,258 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 1,155,197
The numbers
The rally excerpt passed a million views, with both viewing and comments well above CNN's usual first day for Shorts.
💡 Test your knowledge
Who immediately preceded Barack Obama as U.S. president?
Obama succeeded George W. Bush when he took office in January 2009.