TOI correspondent in Washington: American fast food chain Cheesecake Factory has spent decades perfecting the art of serving customers an expansive menu in portions that suggest they may never eat again. It has achieved something even more remarkable now: become a central character in the long running Trump-Obama feud that has devolved into a culinary spat wrapped in a culture war.
And just to drive home the point, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, a billionaire former hedge-fund manager, duly dined at a Washington-area Cheesecake Factory, emerging to tell a conveniently waiting cameraman the “Martha’s Vineyard set” (Obama and his ilk) should give the restaurant a try. Criticism of the place that occupied a storied place in Middle America’s heart had come from a man whose presidential library resembled “Darth Vader’s tomb,” Bessent jibed. Obama’s defenders, trying to forestall the “deplorables” debacle that convulsed America (after Hillary Clinton characterised Trump supporters in those terms in 2016) insist the point was not that Cheesecake Factory patrons are deplorable or declasse or that the food is beneath liberals. well maintained and beautiful, they argued the question is one of proportion While conceding that Trump has a legitimate point when he says the White House should be clean.
It was a remarkable amount of presidential indignation to expend over a joke invoking comparisons to restaurant chain famous for serving enough food to require a congressional inquiry into portion control. The White House itself joined the food fight, posting a list of Trump’s accomplishments in a format that resembled Cheesecake Factory’s menu. He was making fun of Trump’s fixation on turning the People’s House into a monument to his own tacky aesthetic preferences – and the time and energy the president seems to devote to discussing the makeover while voters worry about prices, housing and healthcare. If Obama had compared the White House to French Laundry, a rarefied Michelin-star California restaurant, the snobbery charge might have had more seasoning; Cheesecake Factory, they acknowledge, is practically a national dialect.