随着中期选举前最后一周拉开帷幕，政坛的焦点竟然转向了“芝士蛋糕工厂”餐厅。
As the final week before the midterm elections got underway, the political world’s focus turned to, of all things, the Cheesecake Factory.
前总统奥巴马周末重返密歇根州竞选集会，从多个角度抨击其共和党继任者，但这位前民主党总统似乎从嘲笑特朗普错位的优先事项中获得了一丝乐趣。花了一点时间谈论现任总统对装修和室内设计的痴迷，奥巴马指出特朗普把椭圆形办公室变成了展示金色珍玩的场所。“他把白宫搞得像萨达姆·侯赛因开了一家芝士蛋糕工厂，”这位前总统说道，引来一阵热烈的笑声。
Barack Obama returned to the campaign trail in Michigan over the weekend and took aim at his Republican successor on a variety of fronts, but the former Democratic president seemed to take a degree of pleasure in mocking Donald Trump’s misplaced priorities Spending a little time on the incumbent’s obsession with renovations and interior design, Obama noted Trump turning the Oval Office into a showcase for gold curios“He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” the former president said to hearty laughter. Predictably, Trump and his allies spent the ensuing days (a) whining incessantly about Obama having hurt his successor’s feelings; (b) defending the Cheesecake Factory, which obviously wasn’t the target of the joke; and (c) celebrating the Republican’s redecorating efforts, effectively proving Obama’s point about Trump fixating on renovations instead of his duties. On Wednesday night, Obama returned to the stump, this time in Georgia, where he took some time to reflect on the truly bizarre reaction to his line from days earlier.
正如预料的那样，特朗普及其盟友在随后的日子里（a）没完没了地抱怨奥巴马伤害了继任者的感情；（b）为“芝士蛋糕工厂”辩护，而这家餐厅显然不是玩笑的靶子；（c）为这位共和党人的重新装修喝彩，实际上证明了奥巴马关于特朗普痴迷装修而非履行职责的观点。
"The president wasn't even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison!
周三晚上，奥巴马再次登上讲台，这次是在佐治亚州，他花了一些时间反思几天前那句俏皮话引发的真正荒诞的反应。
But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory" — here's Obama's full riff about the "phony outrage" over his Trump/Cheesecake Factory comments and how it illustrates that "these are not serious people"
“总统甚至对萨达姆·侯赛因的对比都不生气！但他对芝士蛋糕工厂非常不满”——以下是奥巴马就其特朗普/芝士蛋糕工厂言论引发的“虚假愤怒”所作的全段即兴评论，以及他如何借此说明“这些人不是严肃的人”亚伦·鲁帕尔（@atrupar.com）奥巴马在开场时谈到他和家人在芝士蛋糕工厂度过了多少时光，尤其是女儿们成长期间，随后他指出：“当然，真正的问题是，物价涨得太高了，很多人几乎负担不起外出就餐。”
Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) After beginning his riff talking about how much time he and his family spent at the Cheesecake Factory, especially as his daughters were growing up, Obama noted, “Of course, the real problem is, prices have gotten so high a lot of folks can barely afford to go out to eat.”
“所以你可能会以为这届政府会花时间操心这件事，”他继续说道。“但这届政府对我前几天演讲的回应很有意思。他们没有反驳我说的他们应对物价上涨直接负责；他们没有就此争辩。他们没有否认关税正在推高家庭成本；他们对此只字未提。我基于事实指控这届政府存在前所未有的腐败；他们对此只字未提。
“So you would think that this administration would be spending time worrying about that,” he continued. “But that was the interesting thing about how the administration responded to the speech I gave the other day. They did not dispute what I said about them being directly responsible for rising prices; they did not argue with that. They did not deny tariffs were contributing to higher costs for families; they didn’t say anything about that. I accused this administration, based on the facts, that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption; they didn’t say anything about that.
“总统甚至对萨达姆·侯赛因的对比都不生气。那部分没有让他不快。但他对芝士蛋糕工厂的评论非常不满。他大为恼怒。他说我不理解白宫里‘工匠’的工作。
“The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison. That part didn’t bother him. But he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comment. He took great umbrage. He said I didn’t understand the work of the ‘artisans’ in the White House.
“这一切都很疯狂，但真正疯狂的部分是：他们动员了全政府的力量来回应那个笑话——不是应对通胀，而是回应那个笑话。”在强调财政部长斯科特·贝森特本周早些时候在芝士蛋糕工厂的一场怪异活动后，这位前总统总结道：“我要让外面的所有人，包括媒体，明白这一点：这就是我说这些人不严肃时的意思。他们对实际问题没有解决方案，所以他们宁愿让媒体和你们谈论芝士蛋糕工厂。这就是他们过去两年一直在玩的把戏。不断抛出干扰项。攻击、捏造、假装的愤怒，然后指望你们不会注意到账单更高了、生活更艰难了。”
“It’s all crazy, but this was the really crazy part: They mobilized a whole-of-government response to that joke — not to inflation, but to that joke.”After highlighting Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s weird event at a Cheesecake Factory earlier this week, the former president concluded, “To everybody out there, including the press, I want you to understand this: This is what I mean when I say these are not serious people. They don’t have solutions to actual problems, so they’d rather have the media and you talking about the Cheesecake Factory. That’s the game they’ve been playing for the last two years. Just keep throwing distractions out there. Attacks, fabrications, phony outrage, and hope that you won’t notice that your bills are higher and your life is tougher.”
碰巧的是，就在奥巴马在亚特兰大讲话的差不多同一时间，现任总统正在俄亥俄州发表自己的讲话，他在那里花了更多时间谈论自己多么佩服自己对白宫翻修投入了如此多的关注。
As luck would have it, right around the same time that Obama was speaking in Atlanta, the incumbent president was delivering remarks of his own in Ohio where he spent even more time talking about how impressed he was with himself for devoting so much attention to White House renovations.
“奥巴马总统，他不懂清洁，不懂破损开裂的石材和人行道，不懂用沥青铺到主入口是不对的，”这位共和党人说。“我们想要花岗岩和大理石。我们想要它看起来漂亮。你不会用沥青。”随后他又分享了一些关于沥青的额外想法，这大概不是他的政治团队在选举季最后几天想要传达的信息，不过这大大有助于证明奥巴马的观点。
“President Obama, who doesn’t understand cleanliness, who doesn’t understand broken, cracked stone and sidewalk, who doesn’t understand that having asphalt going to your main entrance is not the right thing,” the Republican said. “We’d like to have granites and marbles. We’d like to have it look nice. You don’t use asphalt.”He then proceeded to share some additional thoughts on asphalt, which probably isn’t the message his political operation had in mind for the election season’s closing days, though it went a long way toward proving Obama’s point.
文章《奥巴马再次抨击特朗普，称他“甚至对萨达姆·侯赛因的比较都不生气”》
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