- Then President Obama made several jokes at the expense of Trump, who was in attendance, at the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner
- Trump’s political advisor Roger Stone believes this was the night Trump decided to run for President
- The video is being shared as being a significant moment in history, following Trump’s second Presidential election victory
After months of enduring personal attacks about his birth certificate, his religious identity and the legality of his presidency, Barack Obama used a very public platform to aim some revenge at Donald Trump. It was April, 2011, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and the then President of the United States decided it was time to return fire with his most vocal critic sitting in the audience in front of him.
Thirteen years later and the video of Obama’s takedown of Trump has resurfaced and is being reshared as one of the most significant moments in the history of modern US politics.
In the video, which has been viewed 4.7 million times at the time of writing, Obama begins, “Donald Trump is here tonight. I know he’s taken some flak lately. But no one is happier to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald,”
With Trump watching on, very mildly smiling as the room cheers their approval for Obama, the then President continues, “That’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like ‘did we fake the moon landing?’, ‘what really happened in Roswell?’ and ‘where are Biggie and Tupac?’
“All kidding aside, we obviously all know about your credentials and breadth of experience,” Obama continues, with the audience’s laughter growing louder, “For example, just recently in an episode of ‘Celebrity Apprentice’, at the steakhouse, the men’s cooking team did not impress the judges from Omaha Steaks. There was a lot of blame to go around, but you Mr. Trump recognised that the real problem was lack of leadership, so ultimately you didn’t blame Lil Jon or Meatloaf, you fired Gary Busey. And these are the kind of decisions that would keep me up at night.”
While Obama’s jokes are relatively mild, it is easy to see how uncomfortable Trump is having to sit through such a public roasting, even if he wasn’t the only audience member targeted by Obama that night.
Trump’s political advisor Roger Stone said of the incident, during an interview a couple of months ahead of the 2016 election in which Trump first became President, that the moment served as the inspiration for Trump’s eventual Presidential run.
Speaking to FRONTLINE in The Choice 2016, Stone said, “I think that is the night he resolves to run for President.I think that he is kind of motivated by it: ‘Maybe I’ll just run. Maybe I’ll show them all,’”
Stone’s words were echoed at the time by former Apprentice contestant Omarosa Manigault, who would go onto become Trump’s director of African-American outreach.
“I thought, ‘Oh, Barack Obama is starting something that I don’t know if he’ll be able to finish. Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump,” she adds. “It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, whoever disagreed, whoever challenged him — it is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
Obama would go onto a successful re-election campaign a year later, overcoming the challenge of Republican candidate Mitt Romney, becoming the first President since Ronald Reagan in 1984 to win a majority of the national popular vote more than once, and the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944.
Trump would win the popular vote for the first time in three attempts this week in his election face-off with Vice President Kamala Harris, but lost to Joe Biden in the 2020 election and to Hillary Clinton in 2016, although obviously the former Apprentice host won the majority of the electoral college votes in that election to secure the presidency for the first time.
The soon-to-be 47th US President had mentioned potentially wanting to change the American constitution to allow him to run for more than two terms, during his campaign trail, as no US President can legally serve more than two terms, although Trump has since commented, stating that this campaign would be his last.
(h/t PBS)
