Barack Obama says he's living rent-free in President Trump's head. In an appearance on the "All the Smoke" podcast, the former president agreed when host Matt Barnes described Trump's "obsession" with him, replying, "I obviously have a room in his head, a suite in his head," per the Hill. Obama contrasted that with his own approach in office, saying George W. Bush was "the last thing I had time to … worry about," and arguing that a leader fixated on a predecessor isn't focused on "the American people and the job they're supposed to do."
Obama also said Trump behaves differently in private than in public, where he's labeled his predecessor "weak," "stupid," and a "traitor," and shared a video with his face superimposed on a cartoon ape, per Newsweek and the Independent. Social media and phones encourage people to "say kind of crazy stuff that they would never say to your face," Obama said. But "whoever you were talking about" doesn't speak the same way face-to-face because "he knows better," Obama told Barnes, without actually naming Trump.
The pair's strained dynamic has roots in Trump's false birther claims and Obama's public roasting of him at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Dinner. Trump has renewed attacks in recent weeks, sharing AI-generated images of Obama swimming in a sewage-filled Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool and depicting Obama's presidential library as an overflowing dumpster, per Newsweek. Obama said the fixation with him was "a strange thing to me." In response, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Obama "will go down as one of the most dishonest, divisive, and destructive Presidents in history."
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