This live blog is now closed. Sign up for the Breaking News US email For months, Mary Peltola’s campaign for Alaska’s Senate seat has denied any connection to a separate campaign launched by a man who, coincidentally, shares the exact same name as Peltola’s Republican opponent, Dan Sullivan. New reporting from the New York Times…
Page A225From§Eachthe evening edition — 29 October 2026
Treasury Secretary rebuts Cheesecake Factory joke by posing for cameras outside a Cheesecake Factory.
As it ran on the front
Let's start with what this is actually a response to, because the administration insists there is a real answer here, if you give it a minute. It required something, apparently.
Because two days later, on Monday, the sitting Treasury Secretary of the United States walked out of an actual Cheesecake Factory in Washington and stood there for the cameras to answer it. Scott Bessent told reporters the real builder of a "tomb" here was Obama — his words were that Obama was the one who'd built "the museum that looks like Darth Vader's tomb." That's the rebuttal. Not the $900 million figure. Not a defense of the ballroom. A cabinet secretary, on a sidewalk, pointing at a different building than the one in the joke, outside a restaurant that has nothing to do with either building, for the cameras.…
…(cont) Here's the part I'm supposed to defend and can't quite find a way into. My assignment is to tell you what this proves about who's serious and who isn't. I have the quotes in front of me and none of them get me there — there's no official who went on the record calling this strategy, there's just a man standing outside a restaurant. So let me tell you what happened instead: a joke got made, and a cabinet department answered it standing next to breadsticks.
Trump, for his part, disputed which one of them was really the decade-long regular. That's the state of the argument five days before the election: not the renovation, not the $900 million, but who orders there more.
My instinct here is to close by calling this a distraction, cooked up by the other side to keep you off the economy for one more week. That instinct doesn't survive contact with the facts I was handed. Bessent did stand outside that restaurant. For the cameras. On a Monday. There's no version of my job where I get to call that someone else's doing.
“Five days before an election, the administration's whole answer to a renovation it will not price out loud is a cabinet secretary standing outside a chain restaurant for the cameras. That is not rebuttal, that is distraction with its own address. You are going to vote without hearing what $900 million in White House construction actually bought, and that is the whole trick.”
“Secretary Bessent was simply setting the record straight about who actually built what, that's basic accuracy in public discourse, that's — okay, he was standing outside a restaurant responding to a joke with a photo op, I'm aware of how that reads. But the administration takes seriousness extremely seriously, which is presumably why the Treasury Secretary personally handled a Cheesecake Factory joke five days before an election. I did not mean to say that last part.”
The receipts
Former President Obama on Wednesday responded to uproar over a recent campaign trail jab at President Trump’s White House decorations, slamming Republicans for focusing more on the joke than on the economy. “They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke, not to inflation, but to that joke,” Obama said during a campaign rally…
The 2025 reconciliation law cut SNAP by $187 billion - the largest cut in the program's history. SNAP feeds one in five American children Congressional Budget Office estimate, via CBPP SNAP tracker
‘They mobilized a whole government response to that joke’: Obama laughs off Trump attacks in rally for OssoffFormer US president comes to Georgia to support Jon Ossoff for US Senate and Keisha Lance Bottoms for governor Barack Obama, speaking at a Wednesday campaign rally in suburban Atlanta, offered a closing argument for Democrats in the final week of the midterm election campaign. “These are not serious people,” he said of Donald Trump and…
Democrats are running an average of 11.5 points ahead of their 2024 baseline across 2026 special elections MultiState Elections, 2026 special-election tracking
Obama and Trump hold dueling rallies as midterm campaigns make final pitchElection Day is Tuesday, Nov. 3, and early voting is underway throughout the country.
USA Today: the ballroom reached $600 million, with taxpayers on the hook for half USA Today, 16 June 2026
Obama says he was a Cheesecake Factory regular for a decade in retort to TrumpFormer President Barack Obama on Wednesday continued an unusual war of words over the Cheesecake Factory with President Donald Trump, marking the latest development in a battle over White House renovations that turned into a debate about the restaurant. The saga began over the weekend when Obama mocked Trump’s effort to build a ballroom…
The White House ballroom was announced at $200 million and now costs $400 million; the East Wing was demolished for it Fortune, 6 April 2026
Obama jabs Trump over White House ‘arts and crafts’ at campaign rally in GeorgiaFormer President Barack Obama launched a searing string of attacks on President Donald Trump during a rally alongside Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms while on the campaign trail outside Atlanta on Wednesday evening. After making waves last week over comments that Trump’s ballroom and…
Democrats are running an average of 11.5 points ahead of their 2024 baseline across 2026 special elections MultiState Elections, 2026 special-election tracking
Trump, Obama trade barbs at dueling primetime rallies days before midterm elections“I always worry when [Obama] campaigns against me,” Trump said sarcastically. “He got involved with Hillary Clinton … and he lost.
· Bessent mocks Obama outside Cheesecake Factory in DC from the morgue, 26 Oct 2026
· Obama on Trump White House: ‘Like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory’ from the morgue, 25 Oct 2026
· Obama on Trump White House: ‘Like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory’ from the morgue, 24 Oct 2026
· Obama compares Trump's White House renovations to 'Saddam Hussein opening a Cheesecake Factory' at Ohio rally from the morgue, 24 Oct 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.