Trump, 80, Roasted After Desperate Obama Attack Backfires
“We all know who the better hang is,” one user commented.
Jonathan Ernst/REUTERS
A nostalgic post from Donald Trump comparing himself to a White House predecessor appears not to have landed as he had hoped.
The 80-year-old president spent Saturday flooding Truth Social with AI-generated imagery, including one depicting himself as God holding the world on his shoulders. But it wasn’t the divine self-portrait that got people talking.
Instead, attention shifted to a side-by-side post showing Trump at the New York Military Academy. Although he labeled the image as him at age 20, the photo is actually his high school graduation portrait from the school’s 1964 yearbook, taken when the future president was 17.
Trump had better luck getting the age right on the picture he paired it with: a photo of Barack Obama at 18, pictured with a cigarette in his mouth during his freshman year at Occidental College in Los Angeles.
It’s unclear why Trump labeled himself as 20 years old in the photo.
The president posted the comparison on Saturday.
@adammocklerr/ X
The post sparked meme-style reactions online, with one user joking that Obama was “aura mogging” Trump in the comparison image, a slang term meaning someone who appears more confident and dominant.
“We all know who the better hang is,” another user commented on the image, while others pointed out that Trump’s image showed him in a military uniform despite his never having served in the military.
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“His parents sent him to a military boarding school for behavioral issues & bullying,” one user wrote on X, adding, “Now he uses the photo to pretend he was in the military.”
Barack Obama and Donald Trump have been political foes for the past decade.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The president received five draft deferments: the first four for education and a fifth after he claimed to have bone spurs on his foot, which exempted him from service during the Vietnam War. He did, however, attend New York Military Academy, a boarding school about an hour north of New York City, which his father, Fred Trump, reportedly sent him to after concerns over his behavior.
“He was an egomaniac when he was 16,” his former roommate at the academy, Art Davie, told the Daily Beast. “He was a great flag waver for himself. He wanted everyone to recognize he was the GOAT in everything he did out there.”
While the president’s photo shows him in a military uniform, the image of Obama, 64, that he compares himself to depicts the future president in his college years, posing for a series of candid black-and-white portraits taken by a fellow student in her Los Angeles apartment.
The cigarette in Obama’s mouth reflects a habit he has been open about trying to quit over the years.
A comparison of Trump and Obama at age 46 presents a less flattering contrast than the one the president posted.
@P_Kallioniemi/ X
One user on X compared images of the two presidents not in their early adulthood, but in middle age, showing Obama at 46 during his 2008 presidential campaign alongside Trump at 46 with his former friend, convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“Obama Derangement Syndrome,” one person commented on X in response to the comparison, referencing the president’s own use of the term “Trump Derangement Syndrome” to describe political opponents who speak critically of him.
“He talks about ‘TDS’ but he has ‘ODS,’” another person commented, referring to the so-called syndrome, adding: “Barack Obama lives rent-free in Donald Trump’s clouded, decompensating, rotting brain.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump’s frequent mentions of Obama have only increased since the former president first left office, according to CNN, which reported that Trump mentioned Obama’s name an average of 1.8 times per day.
The comments made by the president appear not to have shifted American opinion, with a CNN/SSRS survey conducted in June showing 57 percent of Americans hold a favorable view of Obama, compared with 34 percent for Trump.
The former president has addressed Trump’s “constant” references to him during an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast this month, saying he found it “very strange.”
“Obviously, you know, I have a room in his head—a suite in his head,” Obama said.
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