CLEVELAND — Former President Barack Obama, appearing here Saturday at his first campaign rally for this fall’s midterm elections, characterized President Donald Trump as an agent of “chaos and cruelty” and a man of broken promises.
And in a particularly pointed criticism of his Republican successor, Obama mocked Trump’s ballroom construction and the gold accents he has added throughout the White House.
“Does anybody really think this guy in the White House right now is spending all our time thinking about these issues?” Obama wondered. “I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but he seems very focused on home renovations. He should be on HGTV.”
Obama added, a moment later: “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”
The crowd inside a near-capacity Public Auditorium, which holds more than 10,000, erupted with amusement at that and other quips Obama offered throughout his afternoon address. The former president’s visit was aimed at boosting two Democrats: Amy Acton, the party’s nominee for governor, and former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who has mounted a comeback bid for his old job.
Ohio, which has become more reliably Republican since Trump’s rise in politics, has emerged as an intense battleground this year. Polls show both races are toss-ups, with Democrats especially hopeful of winning the governorship for the first time in 20 years.
“This midterm election victory runs through Ohio,” Rep. Shontel Brown, a Democrat whose district includes a large part of Cleveland, said as she warmed up the crowd.
Trump has rallied in the state twice in recent weeks, with a pitch primarily focused on Brown’s Republican rival, Sen. Jon Husted. Trump will return next week for an event in Chillicothe, a smaller, working-class city that served as Ohio’s first state capital.
Meanwhile, the race for governor was jolted this week by the decision by Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate for governor, to air an explosive attack ad that features Acton’s estranged mother calling her a “liar.”
The ad was met with swift and bipartisan condemnation for drawing on a family’s painful history of alleged sexual abuse. Obama was particularly scornful of the attack in his speech Saturday.
“We all know that guy — who is, like, thirsty,” Obama said of Ramaswamy. “Just wants to get attention no matter what, willing to do anything. And in recent days we’ve seen there is no line he won’t cross.”
He added: “I don’t know what’s happened where the standards of behavior have gotten so low that somebody can run an ad like that.”
Acton also briefly touched on the controversy in her remarks at the rally, thanking supporters for “the love you have shown” in recent days.
“My opponent,” she said, referring to Ramaswamy, “has chosen to exploit, intentionally, my childhood to save his struggling campaign, but it’s not going to work.”
In the Ramaswamy campaign’s ad, Donna Arthur calls her daughter a liar and urges Ohioans not to vote for her. Acton has said she has not seen or talked to Arthur in nearly 50 years. Acton also over the years and throughout her campaign has talked about having been sexually abused by Arthur’s then-husband as a child. She has said she was removed from Arthur’s custody in 1978, after her then-stepfather was charged with rape.
Ramaswamy has defended the ad, and his campaign on Thursday told NBC News that it planned a $4 million push to air it. Trump has expressed his approval, as well.
Obama also had kind words for Brown, whom he playfully described as frugal.
“He still is wearing the same suit he was in when I met him 20 years ago,” Obama said of Brown, who has a reputation for keeping a rumpled appearance. “You know he got a haircut for this rally, but you all know he’s too cheap to get a haircut more than once every couple months.”
Brown, Obama added, “is not somebody pretending to look out for working folks. He has always been there for you, even when it’s hard, even when he might lose an election.”
Brown, who spent nearly 50 years in public office before losing his Senate seat in 2024, argued in his speech that “corruption is woven into everything” in Washington.
“Politicians who are supposed to be working for you are cashing in,” Brown said. “When they’re in office they play the stock market, and when they leave they become lobbyists.”
When Brown linked Husted with billionaires like Elon Musk and Trump, the crowds burst out into chants of “Lock him up!” The moment called back to the “Lock her up!” chants that rang out at Trump rallies when he campaigned against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
Meanwhile, Obama’s appearance alongside the Democrats drew rejoinders from their Republican opponents.
“Ohioans can’t afford a liberal governor who shows up for Obama but never shows up for them,” said Ramaswamy spokesperson Connie Luck.
“The sight of Sherrod Brown and Barack Obama together again should send shivers down Ohioans’ spines,” Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Husted, said. “The Brown-Obama duo gave us higher taxes, less jobs and wide open borders.”
Obama kept much of his 35-minute speech focused on Trump.
“Now, two years ago, there were a lot of people who weren’t crazy about the guy’s character, but they were frustrated about post-Covid inflation,” Obama said. “They were seeing prices go up, and they heard him make a bunch of promises to get costs under control.”
While Trump has urged voters in this year’s midterm elections to act as if he is on the ballot, Obama suggested they should evaluate Republican candidates by considering whether Trump has lived up to his promises of 2024. He specifically singled out for criticism Trump’s tariffs and the war in Iran, both of which have driven up prices.
“In this case, this administration’s actions are directly responsible for rising costs,” Obama said. “The current president chose to make a series of bad decisions. Most importantly, he decided to start an unnecessary war that nobody asked for, nobody voted for.”
Obama is scheduled to campaign later Saturday in Michigan with Jocelyn Benson and Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidates for governor and Senate there. He is focusing this fall on races where he believes he can motivate Democrats and persuadable voters, with an emphasis on closely watched contests like those in Ohio and Michigan, according to his office.
Next week, Obama is scheduled to visit Atlanta, where he will campaign alongside Sen. Jon Ossoff and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia.
The former president — through events, emails and mailings coordinated by Democratic committees — also has helped raise more than $15 million for midterm races, his office said. He has recorded more than two dozen TV and radio spots, and more are expected before Election Day.
In his speech here, Obama described the election as a potential “inflection point” and “course correction.”
“After two years,” he said, “of chaos and cruelty and corruption and incompetence, the likes of which we have not seen in modern times,” Obama said. “you get the chance to say, ‘Enough’s enough, we are going to change right here in Ohio.’”