Jun. 25, 2026, 5:37 PM EDT<\/time><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Former President Barack Obama<\/a> slammed President Donald Trump<\/a> for obsessing over him while serving in the nation’s highest office.<\/p>\n

“I obviously, you know, have a room in his head. A suite in his head,” Obama said an an episode of the podcast “All The Smoke,” posted Wednesday.<\/p>\n

“Look, first of all, when I was president, the last thing I had time to do was worry about what somebody said, or what my predecessor did,” Obama told the two hosts, former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson. “They’re gone. I’ve got work to do.”<\/p>\n

Trump has a long history of publicly insulting the former president, often invoking Obama’s middle name, Hussein.<\/p>\n

Trump has also heavily promoted the false and racist “birther” conspiracy theory, which claimed that Obama was ineligible to serve as president because he was born in Kenya rather than the United States.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Trump drew criticism after sharing a racist artificial intelligence-generated video on his Truth Social account depicting the former president and former first lady Michelle Obama as apes. The video was later deleted, and Trump did not apologize<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before launching the war against Iran with Israel on Feb. 28, Trump repeatedly criticized the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,<\/a> the 2015 diplomatic agreement primarily negotiated by Obama that also limited Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sweeping economic sanctions relief.<\/p>\n

More recently, Trump trashed<\/a> the newly debuted Obama Presidential Center in Chicago as a “very unattractive building” and “total disaster<\/a>,” adding that when his presidential library opens, it will be “on time, on budget, best location in Miami.”<\/p>\n

Without mentioning Trump by name, Obama criticized leaders who fixate on their predecessors, characterizing their priorities as misplaced.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

“If you’re doing the job right, everyday, you’ve got five, ten things that are real hard. And you have to be constantly focused,” Obama said. <\/p>\n

“The idea that I’d be worrying about somebody who came before and me trying to measure, ‘What’s he done today?’ Constantly worrying about that is a strange thing to me. It shows me somebody who’s not focused on the American people and the job they’re supposed to do.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW, with a focus on how global events and foreign policy shape U.S. politics. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

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