Although he has been out of office for nearly a decade, former President Obama remains fully aware of the influence he has over President Trump.
While it recently appeared on The whole smoke podcast, the former world leader spoke with former NBA player Matt Barnes about Trump’ss fascination with him and his family.
“The thing about it is — look, you’ve got to ask him what it is,” Obama said, while Barnes replied, “The occupation.”
“The occupation,” Obama remarked. “Apparently I have a room in his head, a suite in his head.”
He then reflected on his time in the Oval Office, noting that his predecessor, George W. Bush, was the “last thing” he had time to worry about.
“They’re gone,” he said of Bush and his other predecessors. “I have work to do. The idea that I would worry about someone who came before and me trying to measure like, ‘what has he done today?’ Constantly worrying about it is a strange thing to me. It shows me someone who is not focused on the American people and the job they have to do.”
Later in the interview, Obama claimed that Trump is a different person when they are alone together.
“The other thing that I believe in, and part of what we try to teach in our leadership training, is that I believe in face-to-face,” he continued. “I believe in conversation. So if this — whoever you were talking about — was in front of me, which has happened a few times, he doesn’t talk like that because he knows better. And I think there’s a — that filter on the phone creates both a situation where people just say something crazy that they would never say to your face without consequences.”
The former president is often talked about, and even blamed, by Trump and his officials. Trump previously blamed Obama for problems with Washington, DC’s Reflecting Pool before its latest multi-million dollar renovation. Years before his first term, Trump was vocal about conspiracy theories about Obama’s US citizenship.
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