Barack Obama brought the house down in front of a huge Georgia crowd as early voting wraps up six days before the Election.
The former president’s speech went off without a glitch. But people couldn’t stop replaying one line afterward that had nothing to do with the ballot.
Standing before a packed arena, Obama showed off the swag and confidence the current president could never match. He dusted off a 12-year-old “scandal” Republicans have never quite let go of.
And he did it while Trump’s camp was still fuming over his Cheesecake Factory roast of the White House.
The crowd caught the reference right away. Judging by how the past week has gone, Trump’s Cabinet members and staff probably caught it too.
Obama headlined a rally at The Arena at Southlake in Morrow, in Clayton County, for Sen. Jon Ossoff and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Keisha Lance Bottoms, according to Fox 5 Atlanta.
Ossoff warmed up the room by declaring that “Georgia will bow to no king” before bringing the 65-year-old former president to the stage, CNN reported.
Obama had a score to settle first. At a rally in Ohio last Saturday, he joked that Trump has the White House “looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
Republicans spent days acting wounded on behalf of the restaurant chain. But Obama made sure the people in Georgia knew what actually got under the president’s skin.
He said he had accused the administration of corruption, and “they did not argue with that. But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comment. He took great umbrage.”
Then, still making his case about corruption, Obama reached back to the summer of 2014 for the kicker.
“I am old enough to remember when a president wearing a tan suit was a major national controversy,” Obama said. “They were very upset. And I know I look good in that suit. It was tight.”
He didn’t linger on it. The joke did its job as a setup, contrasting the outrage Republicans once worked up over a beige blazer with the silence he says greets real corruption now. Then he went back to the stakes on the ballot.
Obama sparked the original uproar on Aug. 28, 2014, wearing a beige suit and gray striped tie at the White House briefing room podium.
Critics called the look “unpresidential,” said it lacked seriousness and compared it to something you’d wear to a Hamptons party, People reported.
That was despite Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton having worn nearly identical shades before him. The episode is still cited as an example of the outsized scrutiny the country’s first Black president faced.
Obama has spent the years since owning it. In August, he appeared in Larry David’s series finale, “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” and blamed David for the fiasco.
Stephen Colbert and David Letterman both showed up in tan suits when the Obama Presidential Center was dedicated in June.
The Obama Foundation marked this year’s anniversary on Facebook with a “Happy Tan Suit Day!” post. It features images of other public figures wearing tan suits. The tan suit that broke the internet was considered unpresidential. But most agreed no one could pull it off like Obama.
One fan echoed, “Say whatever you want about Obama, but the man knows how to work a room.”
Another warned, “If Trump isn’t careful, Obama will pull out his TAN SUIT!”
A third person summed up the double standard this way: “Obama wore a tan suit. Trump had 34 felony convictions. Republicans demanded higher standards from the suit.”
Some connected Obama’s two wardrobe-and-decor controversies, asking, “Is the fake Cheesecake Factory outrage dumber than the fake tan suit outrage? Probably.”
But the end is not over. One person believes, “Obama is going to rage-bait Trump into entirely losing it at this rate.”
Obama wasn’t the only one taking shots. Bottoms, seeking to become the first Black woman elected governor in the U.S., fired up the crowd earlier that evening.
“And no wannabe dictator and his billionaire sidekick will stop the momentum that we are seeing across this state,” she said.
She didn’t name names, but she didn’t have to. Her Republican opponent is billionaire businessman Rick Jackson, who stood beside Trump at a rally in Perry, Georgia, over the weekend.
Bottoms got more direct later, telling supporters, “Slick Rick is running to be Donald Trump’s favorite governor, and I’m running to be yours,” per FOX 5 Atlanta.
The Obama-Trump feud has been simmering all week, and the Cheesecake Factory joke clearly got under Trump’s skin enough to keep it going.
Meanwhile, Bottoms has built her closing argument around linking Jackson to Trump, arguing he wants to be Trump’s favorite governor.
She also opened up about why she walked away from a second term as Atlanta mayor, a decision Republicans have hammered throughout her race.
Early voting in Georgia ends Friday. Election Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3.
