Barack Obama came back to Ohio on Saturday for the first time since 2018, and he did not ease back in. Inside a packed Cleveland Public Auditorium, he spent his whole speech going at Donald Trump: prices, the Iran war, and the gold taking over the White House.
He was there for two races Democrats need. Sherrod Brown is trying to win back his Senate seat from Jon Husted, a race that could decide which party controls the Senate, and Amy Acton is running for governor against Vivek Ramaswamy. Election Day is November 3, ten days out.
The line everybody walked out repeating was the renovation riff. Obama ran through the list, the ballroom bigger than the White House, the Rose Garden paved over, the helicopter pad on the South Lawn, and landed on the decorating.
“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory. Just gold everywhere. He’s clearly not focused on lowering prices for you.”
Barack Obama, at the Cleveland rally
“He should be on HGTV,” he added. On Iran, he called the strikes an unnecessary war that nobody asked for and nobody voted for, and tied it directly to the pump: “This is the reason why the price of oil is up. Nobody disputes that.” His closing pitch was one sentence: after two years of “chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence,” Ohio voters get to say enough is enough.
Trump answered the same day. Asked about the criticism from Obama and Bill Clinton, he said the two are “critical because we’ve beaten them,” and called Obama “a lousy president.” Ohio gets the final word on November 3.