Barack Obama remains President Donald Trump’s favorite target despite leaving the White House nearly a decade ago.
Trump has repeatedly taken aim at his predecessor over the years, fueling claims that he’s jealous of Obama.
Trump has spent years blaming his predecessor for everything from policy failures to conspiracy theories.
Critics who believe Trump is jealous of his predecessor say he still can’t stop talking about him.
Now, Obama is embracing that narrative himself, suggesting Trump remains fixated on him and even members of his family.
Obama joined retired NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on a recent episode of their “All the Smoke” podcast.
The trio discussed everything from life after the presidency to Trump’s verbal shots at the Obamas.
Barnes, 46, recalled former first ladyMichelle Obama walking back her famous “when they go low, we go high” motto and embracing Democrats no longer taking the high road in the Trump 2.0 era.
Nearly 30 minutes into the conversation, Michelle’s husband was asked how he handles being berated by Trump in public.
“You constantly seem to meet the negativity and the racism with class, and it makes you stand out so high. But you don’t just want to cuss his a— out sometimes?” Barnes asked Obama.
The Hawaii-born politician initially suggested that only Trump could explain his “obsession,” before adding, “I obviously have a room in his head… a suite in his head.”
Obama went on to slam Trump’s work ethic and his low level of focus and discipline.
“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 argued.
He dismissed the comparisons.
“Why would I worry about somebody who came before me or try to measure, you know, like, ‘What’s he done today?’” he explained.
44 then humiliated Trump with one line that just might send him over the edge.
He said an effective president learns to “screen out the noise” while accepting “constructive criticism” from citizens.
“Constantly worrying about that is a strange thing to me. It shows me somebody who’s not focused on the American people and the job they’re supposed to do,” Obama added.
“I screened that stuff out pretty early on and I ain’t worrying about it. Another way of putting it is there’s no reason to dignify that kind of stuff.”
Trump’s fixation on discrediting Obama began as far back as 2011 over a false birtherism conspiracy theory.
During his 2008 presidential campaign, conservatives claimed Obama was ineligible to hold the office because he was born in Hawaii.
Trump latched onto that birther movement and catapulted himself to the front in the 2016 race, where he shockingly defeated Obama’s former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, in the general election.
Throughout the years, Trump would lean back into his deep-seated ill will for Obama by spewing more unsubstantiated conspiracies.
Also in 2016, Trump accused the Harvard Law School graduate of orchestrating “deep-state” crimes.
Those far-fetched allegations escalated by 2025 to the point that Trump accused Obama of treason for supposedly rigging the 2016 presidential election.
Even some of Trump’s supporters felt he crossed the line in February 2026 when he posted a video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes to his Truth Social account.
The minute-long clip, which also promoted conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, was eventually taken down. Trump refused to apologize for the offensive meme.
Initially, the White House defended the post against “fake outrage,” but later blamed a staff member for sharing the now-deleted video.
Trump once again brought up Barack Obama while facing backlash over the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
His renovation of the landmark is now covered in green algae, blue paint residue, and dead ducks floating in water.
“Barack Hussein Obama, have you ever heard of him?” Trump asked reporters assembled in the Oval Office on June 22.
Trump then ranted about how Obama destroyed the Reflecting Pool by spending $100 million to take “putrid” water from a river, a claim that fact finders reported as false.
Many Threads users took issue with Trump trying to shift responsibility for the headline-grabbing Reflecting Pool debacle onto Obama.
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One person expressed, “This is the dumbest man I’ve ever listened to. To those who voted for him, you should be ashamed.”
“Obama needs to straight up start suing for all the defamation,” advised a commenter.
Another exclaimed, “Trump utters the magic words of ‘Barack Hussein Obama’ to lay cover for his EVER-increasing INEPTITUDE!!!”
Obama received opposite reactions from “All the Smoke” YouTube viewers. One fan praised the 44th president by commenting, “Not perfect, no one is… But what a great man and awesome President.”
“We went from this to a big orange bag of piss,” complained one person in the comment section, comparing Obama to Trump, a sentiment that will likely grow as the sitting president makes it clear that the buck never stops with him.
