Obama says Trump’s White House looks like a Cheesecake Factory. Trump calls Obama ‘not a smart guy’ and ‘a lousy president’

Barack Obama told one joke about the White House decor. Donald Trump answered it with a three-minute monologue about masonry.

On Saturday in Cleveland, Obama said Trump has “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.” On Monday at Joint Base Andrews, a reporter asked for a response, and Trump went straight to the plaster: “I fixed it with the finest artisans in the world. We’ve reskinned it. It was in horrible shape.” Obama, he said, would walk right past it all: “He doesn’t notice dirt,” or walls that “hadn’t been cleaned for years.” Trump, meanwhile, calls himself a “very clean person.”

Then he got to the point. Obama “doesn’t understand it, because he’s not a smart guy,” and “in my opinion, he’s not smart at all, because the way he ran the country, only a stupid person would run the country like that.” He closed with “a lousy president,” which is a strong review from a man who had just spent three minutes on window ornaments.

His other claims: the White House “is now in the best shape it’s been since 1792, when it was built,” he does it “with five minutes a day, 10 minutes a day,” and there was “very little money spent.” Those are his. For the record, 1792 is when the cornerstone went in. Nobody moved in until 1800, and the British burned it in 1814. So “since 1792” covers a building that wasn’t finished yet and one that was on fire.