By Chris Lamb
President Barack Obama famously chided Donald Trump in April 2011 during the annual White House correspondents’ dinner. The reality show star had repeatedly and falsely claimed that Obama had not been born in the United States and was therefore ineligible to be president.
Trump’s demands that Obama release his birth certificate had, in part, made Trump a front-runner among Republican hopefuls for their party’s nomination in the following year’s presidential election.
Obama referred to Trump’s presidential ambitions by joking that, if elected, Trump would bring some changes to the White House.
Obama then called attention to a satirical photo the guests could see of a remodeled White House with the words “Trump” and “The White House” in large purple letters followed by the words “hotel,” “casino” and “golf course.”
Obama’s ridicule of Trump that evening has been credited with inspiring Trump to run for president in 2016.
My book, “The Art of the Political Putdown,” includes Obama’s chiding of Trump at the correspondents’ dinner to demonstrate how politicians use humor to establish superiority over a rival.
Obama’s ridicule humiliated Trump, who temporarily dropped the birther conspiracy before reviving it. But Trump may have gotten the last laugh by using the humiliation of that night, as some think, as motivation in his run for the president in 2016.
There is a further twist to Obama joking about Trump’s renovations to the White House if Trump became president. Trump has fulfilled Obama’s prediction, kind of.
The Trump administration has razed the East Wing, which sits adjacent to the White House, and will replace it with a 90,000-square-foot, gold-encrusted ballroom that appears to reflect the ostentatious tastes of the president.
The US$300 million ballroom will be twice the size of the White House.
It’s expected to be big enough to accommodate nearly a thousand people. Design renderings suggest that the ballroom will resemble the ballroom at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private estate in Palm Beach, Florida.
“I don’t have any plan to call it after myself,” Trump said recently. “That was fake news. Probably going to call it the presidential ballroom or something like that. We haven’t really thought about a name yet.”
But senior administration officials told ABC News that they were already referring to the structure as “The President Donald J. Trump Ballroom.”
The renovation will have neither a hotel, casino nor golf course, as Obama mentioned in his light-hearted speech at the 2011 correspondents’ dinner.
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
Obama pokes fun at Trump
In the months before the 2011 correspondents’ dinner, Trump had repeatedly claimed that Obama had not been born in Hawaii but had instead been born outside the United States, perhaps in his father’s home country of Kenya.
The baseless conspiracy theory became such a distraction that Obama released his long-form birth certificate in April 2011.
Three days later, Obama delivered his speech at the correspondents’ dinner with Trump in the audience, where he said that Trump, having put the birther conspiracy behind him, could move to other conspiracy theories like claims the moon landing was staged, aliens landed in Roswell, New Mexico, or the unsolved murders of rappers Biggie Smalls and Tupac Shakur.
“Did we fake the moon landing?” Obama said. “What really happened at Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?”
Obama then poked fun at Trump’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” and referred to how Trump, who owned hotels, casinos and golf courses, might renovate the White House.
When Obama was finished, Seth Meyers, the host of the dinner, made additional jokes at Trump’s expense.
“Donald Trump has been saying that he will run for president as a Republican – which is surprising, since I just assumed that he was running as a joke,” Meyers said.
Trump gets the last laugh
The New Yorker magazine writer Adam Gopnik remembered watching Trump as the jokes kept coming at his expense.
“Trump’s humiliation was as absolute, and as visible, as any I have ever seen: his head set in place, like a man on a pillory, he barely moved or altered his expression as wave after wave of laughter struck him,” Gopnik wrote. “There was not a trace of feigning good humor about him.”
AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File
Roger Stone, one of Trump’s top advisers, said Trump decided to run for president after he felt he had been publicly humiliated.
“I think that is the night he resolves to run for president,” Stone said in an interview with the PBS program “Frontline.” “I think that he is kind of motivated by it. ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all.‘”
Trump, if Stone and other political observers are correct, sought the presidency to avenge that humiliation.
“I thought, ‘Oh, Barack Obama is starting something that I don’t know if he’ll be able to finish,’” said Omarosa Manigault, a former “Apprentice” contestant who became Trump’s director of African American outreach during his first term.
“Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump,” she said. “It is everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him – it is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
The notoriously thin-skinned Trump did not attend the White House correspondents’ dinner during his first presidency. He also did not attend the dinner during the first year of his second presidency.
Although Trump has never publicly acknowledged the importance of that event in 2011, a number of people have noted how pivotal it was, demonstrating how the putdown can be a powerful weapon in politics – even, perhaps, extending to tearing down the White House’s East Wing.
Chris Lamb is Professor of Journalism at Indiana University.
JimboXYZ says
Ah, the same guy that spent bailout money on the back end of Bush’s ruined economy. Not only did we pay for the bailout, but the inflation of unaffordable healthcare & cars, anything else that Obama & Democrats claimed to have saved America with. And then Biden came in & gave us the inflation economy with no bailouts, after they created Covid to gain power. The day Clinton, Bush, Obama & Biden are off the books for a POTUS pension, the better off America will be that day. Millions of dollars per year wasted on those government frauds that we were duped into as a choice along the way. Lesser of 2 evils doesn’t really apply, they were all evil, evil is just evil.
Whathehck? says
Revenge is the goal of one of the most powerful person in the world, it certainly is not the well-being of Americans. He is successful in dismantling our relationships with allies and alliances. He is worshipping horrible dictators and pardoning one of the worst alien drug lord in our country while destroying the lives of Hispanics who didn’t pay a traffic ticket accusing them of being part of a gang.
Let’s not detail the horrible selfish way that narcistic man talked to children on Christmas day on NORAD tracking Santa. It was a great experience for 70 years for small children to talk with a caring President, not this year the golden grinch couldn’t hack it.
JimboXYZ says
It’s not revenge when it’s exposing fraud & abuse, funny that nobody has a problem with the Minnesota Somalian fraud for Children’s Daycare Centers ? That was right under Biden-Harris noses. Millions of dollars paid for Children’s Daycare that have no children in them. You need to thank Trump-Vance, Doge, the FBI & anyone else exposing this, for cleaning this mess up. And to think Walz was going to be our VP under Harris ? I don’t care if they deport every Somalian involved in that fraud & abuse. If Ilhan Omar is in that deportation, so be it.
Marek says
Trump has a taste of the ” white trash “
Pogo says
White trash is owed an apology; they, at least, are human. Trump is mutated evil — incarnate.
melly says
“The renovation will have neither a hotel, casino nor golf course, as Obama mentioned in his light-hearted speech at the 2011 correspondents’ dinner.”
So “kind of” predicting this turned out to be a not-remotely-lighthearted nothingburger. It is in no way any kind of germane, intelligent prediction, it is simply another way to grab at anything we can to lift up former POTUS Obama, who needs all the lifting he can get, given that he’s personally helping to design his own “Chicago Death Star Library”. Talk about UGLY…
Sherry says
trump’s taste= gold plated, INSECURE “Tacky Tacky Tacky”! He’s obsession with putting his name on absolutely everything smacks of his narcissistic megalomania!!
Eat it up Maga! As Pogo says. . . that’s all there is! All “Show” and zero substance!
Gina says
Sherry: to add more insult he cemented over the Rose Garden where there was a
history of past President’s wives and children who pictures portrayed love of nature,
happiness, family memories for future generations to look at and remember, it speaks
volume about what a ruthless, heartless insecure lost soul he is wtth his love of a GOLD
the original GOLDFINGER!
Sherry says
Absolutely Gina! trump the criminal psychopath sexual abuser, with zero class on any level!
BillC says
Trumpfinger he’s the man, the man with the tasteless touch ♪ ♪♪
but he dont’ know much ♫ ♪
Laurel says
Trump is not your retribution,
You are his.
Donald J Quixote is still fighting windmills, and the companies that have poured millions of dollars, time and engineering into them, all because he couldn’t get rid of the windmills in Scotland that, he believed, marred the view from his golf course years ago. The thin skinned snowflake cannot let go of the petty. He now calls the windmills a threat to our security. The lying about birds and whales didn’t work.
It’s just your tax dollars at work for his personal retribution.
Allyn Susan Feinsetin says
Didn’t Barack Obama build a basketball court in The White House while he was in office? I think fans of Obama might want to tread softly on this one–especially considering the concrete monstrosity that Obama is building in Chicago as a monument to himself, that has many in the neighborhood pretty upset.
Melly says
Anybody having anything to do with that hideous monstrosity has a lotta nerve calling any other building ugly…
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Guys, guys. The sooner we stop talking about obama the faster the public will forget about him. It’s worked with hillary, or maybe that’s because she’s hiding from the fallout of having defended one pedophile politically while being chummy with the one that’s in office right now. The sooner we move beyond these neocon democratic clowns the better. Maybe then the democratic party can get in line with actual progressive liberal ideas as presented by, oh I dunno, the rest of the fucking world instead of kneeling in faux african garb or doing interpretive dance to “get the message out.”
BillC says
That’s your solipsistic opinion. (Especially on Kwanzaa).
Samuel L. Bronkowitz says
Yes, correct, it’s absolutely solipsistic to expect the “progressive” party to field candidates that are actually progressive and don’t spend their entire political careers baiting with the rhetoric and switching with the policy. It’s incredibly self-centered of me to openly criticize a party filled with MLK’s white moderates for engaging in performative kwaanza kneeling and fist raising knowing that they’d be more than happy to throw the entire black population in the united states under the proverbial bus if it meant that they could maximize their stock portfolio gains, you maroon.
BillC says
@Bronko did you mean “moron” as the last word in your comment? That’s hilarious, perhaps even an oxymoron!
don miller says
the ballroom is a free build for the taxpayers. obama was never right. His spread the wealth around and hope and change were slogans our first DEI president bamboozled the gullible with to get elected..
Sherry says
@ don. . . “Absolutely Everything” has a PRICE! No intelligent person believes trump is receiving all those millions without a HUGE “Unethical/Illegal” FAVOR of some sort! Just like the “personal” gift of the plane! Can’t see the massive corruption? Geeeez!
don miller says
Got any proof the ball room won’t be all independently paid for? No. Just unproven speculation to gig trump. you are right. everything costs somebody. believing obama’s slogans got him elected and thousands died under him trying to wrap up iraq and afghan and both became an embarrassing backfire. All as s he entered the WH poor now lives rich.
Laurel says
Some will not see, and I no longer care if they do. The comments about Obama here are tedious. You know, that big smile vs. Trump’s angry mugshot! Um, okay. A basketball court vs. a ballroom bigger than the White House itself. Close. One wife vs. three cheated on. Yeppers.
It’s also tedious that there are some who believe that only a white male is not DEI. You know, like Hegseth was given his current job by his merit.
As Bill the Cat used to say: “PPhhfisft!”
Sherry says
Right On Laurel!
Indoctrinated Maga’s “obsessive” and lame excuses for their “Lord and Master” trump. . . straight from Fox/Newsmax:
* President Obama’s fault
* President Biden’s fault
* It wasn’t “rape” because it was only his finger(s?)
* Fraud isn’t so bad. . . besides, Stormy caused it
* “TDS”
* Witch Hunt
* Hillary’s fault
* Immigrants’ fault
* DEI fault
* Mainstream media’s fault
* Scientists’ fault
* It’s a HOAX
OMG! LOL! LOL! LOL!
Laurel says
Harry S. Truman – The buck stops here.
Donald J. Trump – I know nothing.
Sherry says
Priceless Laurel! Simply Priceless! Happy New Year!
aurelaLuaLurelLL says
Happy New Year to you, my friend!
Laurel says
Too funny! The field got too small to see what I wrote, and wouldn’t clear my name no matter how many times I back spaced!
LaLaLaLa!😉
Sherry says
@ Laurel, Ya gotta “Love Hate” technology!
Happy “Better” Year!