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Trump suffers humiliating defeat to Obama in masculinity poll

President Donald Trump has suffered an embarrassing defeat to former President Barack Obama in a new national poll exploring masculinity.

The Bulwark and Pablo Torre Finds Out released a poll, which found that 59 percent of American adults view Obama as a stronger role model for men, while only 37 percent said the same of Trump.

Trump was right at the bottom of the list when respondents were asked whether he represented a positive example of masculinity. 55 percent said the president was not a strong male role model, leaving him with a negative 18-point net rating.

However, Obama earned a positive 28-point net rating, which is a huge 46-point gap between the rival presidents, which puts the spotlight on how the public feels about Trump’s desire to portray himself as a political strongman.

The results were not split across party lines, as 23 percent who voted for Trump identified Obama as a stronger male role model.

Trump finished last among the politicians, athletes and entertainment figures who were included in the survey.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth performed slightly better than the president, but only 28 percent of respondents considered the Pentagon chief a strong role model for American men, while 39 percent disagreed.

With younger adults between the ages of 18 and 29, Hegseth plummeted, with 34 percent rejecting his image as a strong male role model.

The Bulwark report shows a contradiction between Hegseth’s efforts to project masculinity and toughness and how the public views him.

The Pentagon chief has put an emphasis on his masculinity ideals, such as proposing a testosterone replacement program and physical fitness tests, along with his war on beards.

He has also fat-shamed people whom he considered overweight and frequently participates in physical training with military personnel.

Actor Matthew McConaughey had one of the strongest ratings, posting a positive 33-point net score, followed by Obama at 28 points and NBA legend LeBron James at 25 points.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom didn’t fare well with a negative two-point net rating, with 35 percent identifying him as a strong male role model and 37 percent disagreeing.

YouGov carried out the online poll of 1,417 U.S. adults between 10th and 14th October. The results were weighted to reflect the adult population, and the margin of error reported was 3.6 percentage points.

Trump has frequently attacked Obama, describing him as a "weak leader," but has recently complimented his ability to walk down the stairs of the White House as he deals with the physical decline that usually comes with advanced age.

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Trump's flirty comments with men reveals GOP's hypocrisy: analysis

President Donald Trump is getting away with flirty comments that would have tanked a Democratic leader like President Barack Obama, according to a prominent lawyer and critic of the president.

After reviewing in detail his appreciation of the male physiques of Republicans like Ohio Sen. Jon Husted, Georgia Rep. Mike Collins and Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson, George Conway pointed out the president is avoiding questions about his sexual orientation because of a partisan double standard.

"Let’s stop for a second," Conway told Republican consultant Rick Wilson. "Let’s just stop in here for a second. This is the... He did this twice this week, where he’s talking about... He’s in Ohio... And he’s talking about Senator Husted’s a - -. And, you know, he’s on top of all the like, oh, good looking guy. You know, he talked about Arnold Palmer’s wanger in the 24th. Talk to me. Talk to me."

Wilson responded, "I think one thing you’re seeing here, Trump’s disinhibitions as whatever is wrong with his brain, he is increasingly unable to stop his mouth from saying the things his conscious mind might not want him to say. It’s almost like he’s got some sort of gay Tourette’s going on now. He can’t stop saying he’s a handsome man."

He continued, "I look It just doesn’t – it is so weird and so – especially from a party that’s so wigged out about gays in every way these days and he’s – everybody’s – Listening to this stuff in the last week or so, it’s not entirely new because I think it’s a variable of the thing we’ve all heard a hundred times. I was off stage and these big, strong, handsome security guards, these secret service agents, they’re so big and they said, sir, sir. You know, but now it’s gotten to the point where the mockery is extraordinary. I’m sure SNL is going to knock this one out of the park tonight."

Wilson later observed, "I just want to point out that if Barack Obama said... I looked at him, he was such a handsome man, a great athlete, I looked at his ass, that Fox News would have a 24-hour-a-day siren on. It would be like, homo crisis in the White House, da-da! They would lose their god - - - minds."

Conway then said, "No, it would be Barack homo Hussein Obama."

Conway and Wilson are not the first conservatives to express bewilderment at the response to Trump's comments. MS NOW's Joe Scarborough said "He has a rank" and that he has "become quite the admirer of the male physique. We hear it all the time. Loves talking about buff men. I mean, this is out of a village people video. Like every one of his events. It's like, whoa, look here, look here."

Speaking in Ohio last week, Trump said of Husted that "I'm standing over here, and I don't do this with men very often. I started examining his body because I didn't know he was a great athlete. And I looked, and I watched up and down. I looked at his a—, and I looked at the whole — and then I looked at his hands, look at his hands. He's got these like claws. And I got it. You are a great athlete. I didn't know that because he doesn't talk about that. Congratulations. Now they finally know that was very good. John fought for Ohio. Look at that jawline. I'm telling you, I never saw that. I never studied him."

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Brutal Kimmel supercut honors Fox News with 30 years of on-air meltdowns

To mark Fox News' 30th anniversary, Jimmy Kimmel produced a brutal supercut focusing on the network's most infamous culture-war controversies, going over decades of controversy regarding everything from former President Barack Obama's tan suit to its green M&M's footwear.

On his monologue for Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Thursday, the ABC late-night host ridiculed the conservative network for its habit of turning apparently insignificant topics into political controversies.

Media magnate Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News on October 7, 1996. Kimmel then asked himself what sort of birthday present would be suitable for "the network that ruined everything."

He then described Fox News as being similar to Black Entertainment Television (BET) but targeted at 'angry white grandpas'.

Kimmel also ridiculed Murdoch by picturing the billionaire starting the channel after he had decided that news coverage should reflect exactly what he personally wanted it to.

The comedian said that the network had led to political divisions among American families and made a joke about Fox News causing it to be harder for men to have conversations with their fathers.

Kimmel then showed a clip in which Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy was promoting two limited-edition wines launched to mark the network's anniversary.

Before introducing what he described as a "fair and balanced tribute" to the network's thirty years on television. The montage that resulted showed Fox presenters reacting angrily to a wide variety of cultural war stories they regularly air.

Some of the highlights included criticism of Obama's now-famous tan suit and the fact that he saluted while holding a coffee cup, along with complaints regarding an alleged war on Christmas.

Some of the clips looked at the conservative anger about Mr. Potato Head being made gender-neutral, the allegations that Lego had adopted woke politics and the complaints that the green M&M chocolates were no longer wearing sexy boots.

The compilation also included former Fox host Megyn Kelly stating that both Jesus and Santa Claus are white, as well as parts that criticized the animated character SpongeBob SquarePants for touching on the issue of global warming.

Kimmel claimed that Fox News had set the formula, which other conservative outlets such as Newsmax, Real America's Voice and the Right Side Broadcasting Network followed. He proposed that the network's formula was to keep older viewers politically agitated, getting them to "get mad and stay mad."

The late-night host ended the segment with a sarcastic expression of thanks for Fox News having been on the air for three decades.

Having watched the compilation, Kimmel went back to the anniversary wine that had been featured earlier in the program.

“After watching that, I do need some wine,” he concluded.

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MAGA hitting brick wall with lawsuit against top Mueller ally

Attorney Andrew Weissman, known for his work as FBI general counsel under former President Barack Obama and a consultant for the late special counsel Robert Mueller during the Russian investigation in 2017, is the target of a defamation lawsuit from a former Trump administration official. But according to Law & Crime reporter Matt Naham, the lawsuit is running into major obstacles.

The former Trump official is attorney Stefan C. Passantino, who served in the Office of White House Counsel during the first Trump administration and later represented conservative Cassidy Hutchinson during an investigation of the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol Building. The lawsuit, Naham reports, alleges that Weissmann defamed Passantino when he said — without mentioning him by name — that he "coached" Hutchinson (a former aide to ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows) to "lie" to Congress during her testimony.

But on Monday, September 21, the lawsuit hit suffered a major rebuke when U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan (an appointee of former President Joe Biden) strongly disagreed with Passantino's claims.

AliKhan, in a ruling, wrote, "To resolve the relevant question, the court looks to the full transcript of the September 14 deposition. The court concludes that Mr. Passantino's claims about the message of the transcript are not only legally conclusory, but also incorrect. The transcript, far from contradicting Mr. Weissmann's statement, supports it."

The judge also wrote, "Ms. Hutchinson's statements indicate that Mr. Passantino repeatedly prompted Ms. Hutchinson to lie. For example, Mr. Passantino's advice included telling Ms. Hutchinson that 'Your go-to, Cass,' is 'I don't recall,' even when she asked about answering 'certain questions that [she] would recall.' When Ms. Hutchinson told Mr. Passantino, 'I'm f[—–]. I just lied.' Mr. Passantino purportedly responded, 'You didn't lie … They don't know what you know, Cassidy. They don't know that you can recall some of these things. So you saying 'I don't recall' is an entirely acceptable response to this … In other words, the transcript reflects that even as Mr. Passantino nominally instructed Ms. Hutchinson not to lie, he repeatedly urged her to say 'I don't recall' based on the unverifiability of that response — not based on its truth."

AliKhan continued, "He encouraged her to say 'I don't recall' whenever the Committee would not know the difference, even when Ms. Hutchinson indicated to him that she did in fact recall relevant information."

Naham notes that Passantino "represented Hutchinson for three January 6 Committee depositions, advising her that 'I don't recall' was an 'entirely acceptable' response if she didn't '100 percent recall something' down to the last detail."

"Before Hutchinson's fourth and fifth depositions, however, she fired Passantino," according to Naham. "And though she herself said that Passantino 'never told me to lie,' the judge saw something else in the transcript."

Naham points out that Passantino's lawsuit "alleged that Weissmann's post amounted to an 'insidious lie' and 'smear' that damaged his reputation and harmed him financially."

But AliKhan disagreed, noting the "objective reasonableness" of Weissmann's statement.

Where Passantino goes from here, according to Naham, remains to be seen.

"Law & Crime sought comment from one of Passantino's lawyers and asked whether an appeal will follow," according to Naham.

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Bush’s refusal to call out Trump adds another failure to his mired legacy

When George W. Bush left office, he was among the most unpopular presidents in American history, and he faded into the background, spending his days painting. He remained silent during President Barack Obama's administration and during Donald Trump's presidency and critics wonder why.

Writing for The New Yorker, Jacob Weisberg argues that Bush’s enduring refusal to directly condemn Donald Trump isn't principled post-presidential restraint, but a politically convenient silence that comes out of fear, family loyalty and a fixation on repairing his own legacy.

Weisberg describes Bush as someone whose public values stand in stark contrast to those of Trump's, with his support for immigration, free trade, diplomacy, civic decency and global health. Yet, Bush has consistently avoided naming or even challenging the president, even after he issued startling cuts to Bush's long-running program to help reduce HIV/AIDS in Africa. Weisberg can't understand why, as the only living former Republican president, Bush is refusing to allow the GOP to be remade in Trump's image.

"Trump came after PEPFAR on his first day back in office," recalls Weisberg. "On January 20, 2025, he signed Executive Order 14155, withdrawing from the World Health Organization, and Executive Order 14169, freezing foreign aid, including PEPFAR. After Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency destroyed the U.S. Agency for International Development, the primary steward of American health assistance abroad, uncertainty hovered over what remained of the program. According to Brooke Nichols, a professor of global health at Boston University who specializes in the mathematical modelling of infectious diseases, cuts to PEPFAR cost more than a hundred and seventy-five thousand lives within a year — nearly a quarter of the approximately seven hundred and eighty thousand deaths caused by Trump’s foreign-aid cutbacks as a whole."

Bush remained silent. Even now, as data shows the startling impact of eliminating PEPFAR, Bush is silent. It was Obama, along with U2 singer Bono, who attended a "thank you" video conference to praise USAID workers fired by the Trump administration.

“Is it in our national interests that twenty‑five million people who would have died now live?” Bush asked. “I think it is, and so do you.”

Yet, Weisberg writes, "Bush wouldn’t name the man ending the program or give permission for the video to be released publicly."

Once Trump took office, he trashed many of the Bush-era Republican positions, like building international alliances, trade and a more empathetic rhetoric toward immigrants. Trump had campaigned on “America First,” tariffs, and hard-line immigration policies. In the early days, Bush would occasionally offer indirect rebukes. After the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville in 2017, Bush condemned “bullying and prejudice” while giving a eulogy for his father, the report recalls. Still, he never named Trump.

When Trump fans marched to the U.S. Capitol and began beating police officers and breaking into the building, all Bush would say publicly was that the violent uprising was “a sickening and heartbreaking sight,” recalls Weisberg. Bush said the violence was “reckless behavior” spread by political leaders who relied on “falsehoods."

Bush is old-school, the columnist argues. He's made it clear that he doesn't believe former presidents should comment on current presidents, even one as extreme as Trump. Weisberg calls it a cop-out. There are no binding historical rules that demand it, as became clear during Joe Biden's administration when Trump went on the attack almost daily. Former Republican presidents like Theodore Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were willing to bash their predecessors.

Weisberg said that it's possible Bush may fear provoking Trump, want to protect family members from threats, avoid harming the political career of his pro-Trump nephew George P. Bush or simply lack interest in reentering partisan fights. Bush could also fear that his legacy won't be seen as positive after he brought the U.S. into an unpopular war based on false information. Bush's failures around Hurricane Katrina and the economic crisis are still fresh in the minds of Americans. So, Trump could easily revive Bush's failures were he to weigh in, even impact fundraising for Bush's presidential library.

Weisberg closed by maintaining that Bush should set aside all trepidation and lend his voice to returning his party to a more logical position. Otherwise, he runs the risk of adding another failure to his legacy.

"Trump was burning his house down, and all Bush could bring himself to say was that it was a shame to see it destroyed. Perhaps he will paint portraits of some of the victims," Weisberg said.

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State Department torn apart over bizarre excuse for removing Obama portrait

Back in 2013, artist Kehinde Wiley was commissioned to paint a portrait of then-President Barack Obama. And until recently, it was displayed at the U.S. Embassy in the Dominican Republic. But the painting has been removed on orders from the U.S. State Department, with Donald Trump ally Erin Scavino and other MAGA Republicans attacking the painting as "woke."

Scavino, a former contestant on the hit reality "The Apprentice" — which Trump hosted during the 2000s — now heads the State Department's Art in Embassies program. And she defended the removal during an appearance on former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's podcast, saying, "It was very woke. It was by the gentleman who did Obama's portrait, and it was aesthetically terrifying."

On X, formerly Twitter, the Beast posted, "The State Department has removed a painting by an Obama portrait artist from a U.S. embassy, with the Trump goon running the agency's art operation trashing the piece as 'very woke' and 'aesthetically terrifying.'"

The removal is also being defended by Leah Campos, U.S. ambassador to the Dominican Republic. In a video posted on social media, Campos attacked the Obama portrait for promoting "globalist and woke ideologies."

But according to the Daily Beast's Leah Kimmins, neither Scavino nor Campos "explained what was actually wrong with the image itself."

"A State Department spokeswoman dodged discussing the canvas' contents when the New York Times reached out for comment on Monday," Kimmins reports in the Beast. "Instead, she dredged up a 2023 quote from Wiley about an entirely different painting, 'Judith and Holofernes,' which he had dubbed 'a play on the kill whitey thing,' alongside sexual assault allegations Wiley has denied."

Kimmins continues, "'Judith and Holofernes' reimagines the biblical story of a woman who saves her town by killing an invading army's general. In Kehinde Wiley's version, Judith is depicted as a Black woman holding the severed head of a white woman. The painting is Wiley's contemporary take on a 17th-Century work by Italian painter Giovanni Baglione."

Virginia Shore, who led the Art in Embassies program under former Presidents George W. Bush and Obama, is pushing back against MAGA attacks on Wiley's Obama portrait.

Shore told the New York Times, "Calling this woke is difficult for me to understand. This is a program validated and financially backed under Bush. There is a science of building trust and empathy across borders."

Kimmins describes the removal as "just the latest salvo in a scorched-earth campaign to reshape the embassy art program, an initiative dating back to the Kennedy administration."

The Beast reporter notes, "Trump appointee Scavino — who co-runs the program and is married to Trump's longtime aide Dan Scavino — bragged on Katie Miller's podcast about how fast she scrubbed art from the ambassador's residence in Bucharest, Romania, after MAGA Rep. Anna Paulina Luna claimed she spotted 'satanic baby art' during a trip."

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Trump's ego created a crisis he can't escape — and the world is paying the price

Iran's fighting for survival, Israel's fighting for vengeance and Donald Trump is fighting for narcissistic supply. It all started when the president tore up the Iran nuclear deal during his first term, because it was a signature achievement of Barack Obama.

We’re not speculating about Trump’s motives. “[T]he administration is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons - it was Obama's deal,” British ambassador Kim Darroch wrote in a diplomatic cable to the UK prime minister in 2018.

As you might expect, America’s withdrawal from the Iran deal freed up Iran to enrich a great deal of uranium. When Trump returned to office, he decided that Iran had way too much uranium and he needed to take heroic action to fix this problem of his own creation. His narcissism demanded that he get a better deal than Obama, but his inept real-estate negotiators couldn’t get him there. It’s doubtful that even the most skilled negotiators could have persuaded Iran to do more, but all hope was lost after Trump virtually abolished the State Department and sent his flunkies in lieu of professional diplomats.

In February, Trump decapitated the Iranian regime in the hopes of accomplishing what his predecessor could not. Trump demanded Iran’s unconditional surrender. Iran mocked him with AI-generated videos of Lego President Trump cavorting with Lego Pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and Lego Pete Hegseth swilling booze and committing rape. More consequentially, Iran picked off key oil infrastructure of America’s allies in the Persian Gulf. So far, none of Trump’s shopworn tactics have forced Iran to capitulate on nuclear enrichment, ballistic missiles, regional proxy forces or anything else.

The first round of peace talks in Islamabad disintegrated after Trump promised to negotiate based on Iran’s framework but reverted to maximalist demands as soon as he got the stock market-soothing headline that peace talks were underway. When Trump claimed last week that Iran had agreed to another round of talks, Tehran said they’d agreed to no such thing. Trump was trying to manifest talks by claiming Iran had agreed when it hadn’t. However, Iran is fighting an asymmetrical economic war against the US and it has no interest in helping Trump juice the market. On Sunday, the US fired on the Touska, a 900-foot Iranian cargo ship that allegedly tried to run the American blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has vowed to retaliate. Peace has never seemed further away.

The Strait of Hormuz is another self-made crisis for Trump. On February 27, the strait was wide open. Ships laden with oil and natural gas steamed safely through the narrow entry to the Persian Gulf without paying a cent. The next day, the US and Israel attacked. The day after that, the conduit for 20 percent of the world’s fossil fuel slammed shut. Iran soon imposed a system of tolls that the government moved to make permanent. Iranian lawmaker Mohammadreza Rezaei Kouchi said parliament was pursuing “a plan to formally codify Iran’s sovereignty, control and oversight over the Strait of Hormuz, while also creating a source of revenue through the collection of fees.” This newfound leverage “must continue to be used,” Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei decreed. When asked when Iran might cede control of the strait, senior lawmaker Ebrahim Azizi answered, “never.”

Trump’s advisors had warned him that Iran would close the strait if attacked, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu assured him that he needn’t worry about it. The regime would collapse so fast it wouldn’t have time to close the strait, Netanyahu claimed during a February meeting in the Situation Room. “Sounds good to me,” Trump said. His advisors warned that Netanyahu was selling strategic snake oil, but Trump’s mind was made up.

Before the US blockade began on April 13, the hardline Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was extracting about $2 million per friendly ship, payable in crypto or Chinese yuan. This so-called “Tehran Tollbooth” could generate over $200 billion a year for Iran when normal traffic resumes. That’s money Iran could use to rebuild its shattered navy and accelerate its nuclear program. Moreover, being the toll booth operator would give Iran greater global influence than it would with nuclear weapons. Lots of countries have nukes, but only Iran has Hormuz. All this thanks to the hubris of Trump and Netanyahu.

Experts expect Iran to keep charging tolls after the war ends. “You can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube,” strategic energy analyst Clayton Seigle told the Times.

Trump saw dollar signs. He suggested the US and Iran might team up to extort the world. “We’re thinking of doing it as a joint venture,” Trump said in a greed-fuelled reverie. “It’s a beautiful thing.” Trump soon reversed course and threatened to destroy Iranian civilization if they didn’t reopen the strait immediately. Despite the genocidal threat, Iran kept right on blocking the strait. Trump offered a two-week ceasefire anyway. Unable to force the strait open, Trump’s next move was to seal it even tighter. The US Navy began blockading Iranian ports last Monday. On Friday, Iran opened the strait with the tollbooth intact, after Israel and Lebanon agreed to a ceasefire, only to shut it again because the US refused to call off its blockade.

Early in the war, the US was careful to blunt rising oil prices. It actually removed sanctions on Iranian oil on the grounds that it was more important to maintain global supply than to deny Iran the revenue. Now, Trump is taking the opposite tack, depriving the world of oil to put pressure on Iran. Trump wants a quick end to the war, but a blockade is at best a slow-acting poison that takes effect over weeks or months.

In the meantime, Americans face rising gas prices and accelerating inflation. The US Energy Information Agency forecasts that gas will average $3.70 a gallon for the rest of the year, as cracks widen in the global economy.

“In the past there was a group called Dire Straits,” Fatih Birol, the head of the International Energy Agency warned. “It’s a dire strait now, and it is going to have major implications for the global economy."

The International Monetary Fund warned last week that the conflict could cause a global recession. Ireland’s government may face a no-confidence vote after it called in the army to quell fuel protests. Europe is facing a catastrophic jet fuel shortage. Gas stations in Australia are running dry. Indonesia and Malaysia have ordered civil servants to work from home to conserve energy. “Just from a magnitude perspective, [the war’s impact on Asia] is really very, very, very large,” energy scholar Phillip Cornell told the New York Times.

Machiavelli wrote that "wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please." Trump is desperate for an off-ramp, but Iran is in no hurry to give him one. The regime knows that now is Iran’s best chance to inflict pain on the west and thereby deter future attacks. The United States and Israel are running low on critical weapons that they lack the industrial capacity to replenish quickly. If Iran agrees to end war before inflicting major pain and securing significant concessions, it knows the United States and Israel will eventually replenish their missile supplies and come back at them later.

Trump’s war in Iran is a strategic disaster. His ego got him into this mess and his ego is preventing him from leaving. The world is at this madman’s mercy.

Lindsay Beyerstein is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, investigative journalist and judge for the Sidney Hillman Foundation, which honors excellence in journalism in service of the common good. Her forthcoming book, about conspiracy theories as a political rejection of the Enlightenment, is tentatively titled Against the Light: The Deep State Myth from the Illuminati to QAnon.

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Trump's obsession with past presidents may reveal deeper mental fitness concerns

Over the weekend, President Donald Trump blasted a torrent of AI-slop across social media, much of which was intended to portray him as “the badass that he isn’t and will never be.” According to Boston Globe columnist Renee Graham, however, rather than making him look great, the president’s “cringe-worthy nonsense” exposed his own version of “derangement syndrome.” In Trump’s case, his derangement involves Barack Obama.

“Among the many asinine AI-generated images that President Trump posted on his social media site on Saturday, anything pertaining to the solemn 82d anniversary of World War II’s D-Day invasion was not among them,” noted Graham. “Instead there was an AI slop music video of Trump skydiving; carrying a pizza with tomato sauce fashioned into a self-portrait; riding a lion and a motorcycle; and being the badass that he isn’t and will never be. There was also a lot of other cringe-worthy nonsense unlikely to quell growing alarm about his mental fitness.”

At some point, Trump turned the aim of his social media slop on Obama.

“For the second time in recent days, Trump depicted the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center in Chicago as a dumpster topped with a garbage bag, this time surrounded by a squalid tent city,” Graham explained. “Of the four living former presidents — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Joe Biden, and Obama — Trump is most obsessed with the man whose presidency preceded his own first term.”

Why? According to Graham, “He hates him because he ain’t him.”As an example, she said one needs look no further than Monday’s Knicks game.

“Remember that time Obama attended a sporting event and got mercilessly booed? You probably don’t because it has never happened. In any arena he’s visited, Obama has been greeted warmly,” wrote Graham. “But when Trump appeared on the Jumbotron at Game 3 of the NBA Finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden on Monday night, he was ferociously booed.”

Afterward, Trump tried to spin the humiliating scene, telling reporters, “It was, I think, mostly cheers. It was loud, and it was very enthusiastic.” But according to Graham, “What millions heard was the sound of a nation’s deepening dissatisfaction with Trump. Yet instead of trying to salvage his presidency with policies that work for a majority of Americans instead of only his wealthy pals, Trump is dissing Obama’s library and the man himself.”

While Trump and his allies have spent years claiming that anyone who criticized him had “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Graham asserts that “as usual with Trump, every accusation is a confession. It’s Trump who is completely deranged when it comes to Obama.”

She pointed out that even before entering politics, Trump attempted to delegitimize Obama’s presidency with lies regarding his birthplace, claiming he was born in Kenya. Later as president, Trump claimed that Obama had committed “treason” and had tried to “steal” the 2016 election for Hilary Clinton. More recently, he posted an AI-generated video portraying both Barack and Michelle Obama as apes, which prompted so much outrage that he took the rare step of deleting the post.

And according to Graham, while much of it may seem like “infantile” nonsense, in the real world, “the ramifications of Trump’s Obama derangement syndrome are far more grim.”

In 2018, Trump withdrew from his predecessor’s peace deal with Iran, and leaks later revealed that he did it “to spite Obama.” Now, as Trump’s war with Iran drags on with no end in sight, “Trump, according to a recent report in The Atlantic, is desperate to make a deal that doesn’t fall short of Obama’s.”

Graham’s assessment of why Trump is so bothered by Obama would likely rankle the former’s syndrome regarding the latter.

“It should go without saying that Trump’s disdain for Obama is driven by racism — the heartbeat of MAGA,” Graham explained. “Trump can’t fathom how a Black man was twice elected president, led this nation for eight years without a major scandal, has an admired marriage to an accomplished woman, and is arguably one of the most revered former presidents in American history. At a time when Trump’s administration is diminishing, if not outright erasing, the achievements of anyone who isn’t a straight white man, Obama’s star remains undimmable. In every way, Obama is the anti-Trump, and it drives Trump crazy.”

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The View rips Trump as jealous of Obama's swagger

The hosts of The View had a good laugh over President Donald Trump’s reaction to former President Barack Obama’s mocking Trump's extensive, gold-heavy White House renovations, joking that the building looked "like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory." In response, moderator Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar spoke about what they call Trump’s obsession with Obama, and Trump’s lack of resilience when taking criticism from his adversaries.

“The truth of the matter is, you need a thicker skin to be president of the United States. And you need to listen. And when somebody is giving you an insult, you need to break the insult down. And you can’t do that,” Goldberg said of Trump’s inability to handle pushback. “So you keep doing what you’re doing. And the people in seven days, we’re coming out. And all of this talk about Cheesecake Factories, these are not the things people are concerned with,” she warned ahead of the midterm elections.

When Joy Behar chimed in to say that Trump is jealous of Obama, Goldberg retorted, “He’ll never be a brohta. That’s a fact. He’ll never be a brother, and he wants to be a brotha, and he can’t.”

Goldberg’s comments came moments after Sunny Hostin criticized Trump’s remarks about Obama’s lack of an eye for design and his comparison of the former president to something “dirty.” Hostin reminded her co-hosts and the audience that Trump’s comments carried racial undertones.

In his response, Trump said during a rally of Obama, “We have to explain to Obama that the White House is a symbol of America, and it has to be maintained properly. It has to be painted, and the exterior plaster can’t be falling off the walls, and the decorations and the ornaments on the windows that are magnificent can’t be on one side of the window and falling off on the other side,” he continued.

“It’s not about money. It’s about seeing. Guys like Obama don’t see it. He doesn’t see dirt, he doesn’t see filth, he doesn’t see broken ornaments on a building,” Trump said. “For you to say it was a Cheesecake Factory, that just shows why you were a lousy president.”

Behar echoed similar sentiments to Goldberg, saying that, compared to Obama, Trump will “never be cool. He’ll never be trim, unless he goes on Ozempic like yesterday,” she joked. “He’ll never sing ‘Let’s Stay Together’ better than Al Green. And he’ll never be a better comedian. Obama is like a 9:00 act when the house is full. And Trump is like 2:00 in the morning when nobody’s there except three drunks from New Jersey.”

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Trump behavior raises mental health questions during Obama rant

President Donald Trump again raised questions about his mental fitness through a public rant about one of his predecessors, former President Barack Obama, that was described as "incoherent."

The "incoherent attack on Obama," as The Daily Beast reported on Tuesday, “And here’s what I love, because if you’ve ever heard of Barack Hussein Obama, who’s a rotten president, by the way, he’s gonna be testifying for Mohammed,” Trump told a political rally on Monday.

“He’s gonna be testifying, or I guess, I think he will probably end up being testifying, I don’t know," Trump added. "Whatever the hell he’s doing, but I guess he’s going up to Michigan, a state that I won also very nicely. Thank you very much. I love Michigan. I don’t believe that Michigan values are gonna allow this guy to get in. He’s an arrogant guy. But Barack Hussein Obama is going up there to help him campaign.”

This is not the first recent occasion when Trump, who is 80-years-old, behaved in ways that drew attention to his advancing age and potential mental unfitness. Also on Tuesday, Trump raised alarms when he was seen wandering across the White House helipad and interacting with a non-existent audience. Even though no one was there, Trump persisted for roughly 30 seconds in waving and saluting to the supposed people.

Speaking with AlterNet in October, psychiatrist Dr. Henry Abraham — a former professor at Tufts University who was the lead author of an open letter to Congress with three dozen expert signatories saying Trump is not cognitively fit to be president — compared the situation with Trump to that of a person behaving erratically in a supermarket.

"I like to use the metaphor here of a man in a supermarket," Abraham told AlterNet at the time. "He's getting in line in a supermarket, and he has a basket full of food, and he smashes it into the woman in front of him, because she has more food than he does and it's going to take a long time and he's in a rush — and what's she doing buying so much food, and get out of the way, and she's a terrible person, and I'm really in a rush and I'm far more important than she is."

He added, "And he pushes it, and he really shoves her with the shopping cart. Now, if you saw that, you would say — well, you'd probably call the police, because it's really a bizarre kind of thing. But that's the whole point. It's a bizarre kind of thing. It's crazy. It's a red flag."

Writing for The New Republic on Monday, journalist Timothy Noah said that doctors observing Trump's public behavior from a distance have also noticed a decline.

"This is of course the principal area of concern. I reviewed serious reasons for worry in some detail last month ('Why Trump May Not Serve Out His Presidency')," Noah observed. "To summarize: STAT News reported nine years ago that neurolinguistics and cognition experts comparing old videos of Trump with more recent ones observed deterioration in the complexity of Trump’s unscripted public utterances."

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Jon Stewart loses it over MAGA’s surreal Cheesecake Factory meltdown

Late-night host Jon Stewart returned to the desk of The Daily Show to deconstruct the conservative media’s latest political meltdown, expressing utter bewilderment over a wave of manufactured right-wing outrage surrounding a lighthearted joke made by former President Barack Obama.

According to a report published by The Daily Beast, the sudden controversy kicked off during a campaign rally where Obama was stumping for Democratic candidates. Speaking to an energetic crowd, the former president couldn’t resist taking a swipe at Donald Trump’s highly publicized and characteristically gaudy aesthetic preferences. Specifically, Obama mocked the administration’s interior design modifications to the executive mansion, joking that the extensive White House renovations have “got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

While the punchline was clearly intended as a standard political jab at Trump’s notorious penchant for gold-plated, ostentatious decor, conservative commentators and MAGA pundits immediately launched into a state of full-blown hyperventilation. Stewart noted that as soon as he heard Obama utter the words, he braced himself for the inevitable fallout, expecting partisan media to focus entirely on the comparison to a foreign dictator.

Instead, the outrage took a highly unexpected and surreal turn. Right-wing pundits largely ignored the Saddam Hussein comparison and chose instead to aggressively defend the honor of the casual dining restaurant chain. Commentators across major conservative networks launched into impassioned monologues, treating Obama's offhand remark as a direct, elitist attack on the American working class and the culinary preferences of everyday citizens.

Stewart spent a significant portion of his monologue gleefully tearing apart this line of defense. With mock seriousness, he pointed out the sheer absurdity of conservative networks positioning themselves as the fierce defenders of a corporate restaurant known for its encyclopedic menus and massive portion sizes. He joked about the bizarre optics of media figures treating the Cheesecake Factory as a sacred, localized institution of the American Heartland rather than a highly commercial mall staple.

Connecting the media frenzy to the upcoming midterm elections, Stewart argued that this hyper-fixation on a dining joke is part of a broader, strategic distraction. By hyper-ventilating over fabricated cultural slights, he asserted, right-wing platforms are actively attempting to divert voter attention away from more pressing legislative failures and structural issues facing the country. Stewart concluded the segment by pointing out the deep irony of an administration that campaigned on populist promises spending its time on lavish, gold-plated vanity projects while its media allies pick culture-war battles over fast-casual dining chains.

- YouTube youtu.be

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