Barack Obama hosted a drive-in rally for Joe Biden in Pennsylvania, where the former POTUS called out Donald Trump over his tax history, reported ‘secret Chinese bank account’ and ‘conspiracy theory’ retweets.
Barack Obama once served ice cream at Baskin Robbins, a role on his resume that he used to serve a diss about Donald Trump. On Oct. 21, the 44th president of the United States hosted a Pennsylvania drive-in rally for Joe Biden — his former vice president and the current Democratic presidential nominee — where Obama tore apart Trump. At one point during his speech, Obama took aim at the POTUS’s seemingly shady tax history, which has been questioned over the past month.
“It is not a great idea to have a president who owes a bunch of money to people overseas. That’s not a good idea. I mean, of the taxes Donald Trump pays, he may be sending more to foreign governments than he pays in the United States. His first year in The White House he only paid 750 dollars in federal income taxes,” Obama said at the podium.
This paved way to Obama’s burn that soon went viral. “Listen, my first job was at a Baskin Robbins when I was 15 years old. I think I might have paid more taxes that year…dispensing ice cream,” Obama teased. The king is back. On a more serious note, the former president asked, “How is that possible? How many people paid less than that? It’s possible, just possible now, that if you are living high on the hog and you only pay $750 in taxes, that maybe, just maybe, he doesn’t know what working people are going through here in Pennsylvania.”
Obama was referring to a September report from The New York Times, which obtained Trump’s tax information and alleged that he paid “$750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency” and “another $750” during his first year in The White House. The report didn’t account for Trump’s “personal returns” in 2018 and 2019, but it also claimed that Trump “paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.” It was later alleged that Trump was maintaining three foreign bank accounts in Ireland, Britain and China, according to an Oct. 20 report from NYT. Referring to the latter country, Obama got in another diss about Trump during Wednesday’s rally.
“Listen, can you imagine if I had had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for reelection?” Obama asked the crowd at the drive-in event, where a reported 300 cars showed up. He added, “You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would have called me Beijing Barry.” The joke led the term “Beijing Barry” to start trending on Twitter! Obama certainly made a mark at the first in-person campaign event. that he’s held for Biden in 2020.
Obama was really feeling his funny bone. He even mocked Trump’s affinity for retweeting conspiracy theories, a hobby that he likened to the pastime activity of a “crazy uncle.” Obama told the crowd, “With Joe and Kamala [Harris] at the helm, you’re not going to have to think about the crazy things they said every day. You’ll be able to to go about your lives knowing that the president is not going to retweet conspiracy theories about secret cabals running the world or that Navy seals didn’t kill Bin Laden. That’s not normal presidential behavior. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a high school principal. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a coach. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a co-worker. We wouldn’t tolerate it in our family, except for maybe a crazy uncle somewhere.”
Trump, per his usual style, called the tax report “fake news” during a press briefing at The White House on Sept. 27. He also claimed that his tax returns have “been under audit for a long time” and that “the IRS does not treat [him] well.”