Former President Barack Obama said President Donald Trump has an “obsession” with him in a newly released podcast interview, saying Trump acts differently with him in person than he does on social media.
“I obviously have a room in his head, a suite in his head,” Obama said in an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast.
Trump has often mentioned Obama throughout his two terms as president and during his political campaigns, calling Obama by his full name, “Barack Hussein Obama.” This spring, during the war in Iran, Trump renewed his bashing of the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal.
That deal, which traded sanctions relief for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear development, has long been targeted by Trump, who pulled the United States out of the agreement in 2018. In a late May Truth Social post, Trump said his administration’s envoys are negotiating a deal that is “THE EXACT OPPOSITE” of Obama’s deal.
“One of the worst deals ever made by our Country was the Iran Nuclear Deal, put forth and signed into existence by Barack Hussein Obama and the rank amateurs of the Obama Administration. It was a direct path to Iran developing a Nuclear Weapon,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Obama, who has stayed mum in response to many of the president’s comments about him, has been thrust back into the spotlight with the opening of his presidential library in Chicago, just as Trump’s negotiators seek to broker a new deal with the Iranians.
“When I was president, the last thing I had time to do was worry about what somebody said or what my predecessor did — they’re gone. I’ve got work to do,” Obama said in the interview.
Obama also ripped Trump as someone who acts differently with him in person than he does on social media.
“I believe in face-to-face, I believe in conversation, so if this — whoever you were talking about — was in front of me, which has happened a couple times, he don’t talk like that. Because he knows better,” Obama said of Trump.
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White House spokesman Davis Ingle bashed Obama’s comments in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“Barack Hussein Obama will go down as one of the most dishonest, divisive, and destructive Presidents in history,” Ingle said.