Barack Obama has called out US President Donald Trump for “mobilising the whole of government” to respond to his joke about Trump turning the White House into the Cheesecake Factory.

Obama and Trump continued their feud at competing rallies in Georgia and Ohio for the upcoming US midterm elections, with the president hitting back at Obama’s jibe.

Obama had ripped into Trump’s focus on renovations over the weekend, telling a crowd in Ohio: “He’s got the White House looking like Saddam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory.”

On Thursday (AEST), Trump told Republican supporters at a rally in Ohia: “I paid for it myself. I fixed it, and now it’s more beautiful and in better shape.”

He said Obama was miffed because he was someone “who doesn’t understand cleanliness, who doesn’t understand broken, cracked stone and sidewalk, who doesn’t understand that having asphalt going to your main entrance is not the right thing”.

A short time later in Georgia, Obama doubled down and highlighted Trump’s fixation on his Cheesecake Factory comment while not refuting other criticisms he had made, such as failing to tackle inflation and accusations of corruption.

“The interesting thing about how the administration responded to the speech I gave the other day. They did not dispute what I said about them being directly responsible for rising prices. They did not argue with that,” Obama told the rally in Georgia.

“They did not deny tariffs were contributing to higher costs for families. They didn’t say anything about that. I accused this administration, based on the facts, that they were engaging in unprecedented levels of corruption. They didn’t say anything about that.

“The president wasn’t even mad about the Saddam Hussein comparison. That part didn’t bother him, but he was very upset about the Cheesecake Factory comments.

“He took great umbrage. He said, I didn’t understand the work of the artisans in the White House.”

“It’s all crazy, but this was the really crazy part,” Obama added. “They mobilised a whole of government response to that joke — not to inflation, but to that joke.”

“The White House even called the secretary of the treasury – this is the man who is in charge of the economy, the person who’s supposed to be figuring out how to make your life more affordable, the guy who’s supposed to be figuring out how to lower inflation and reduce interest rates.

“They told him he should hold a press conference in front of the Cheesecake Factory,” Obama said.

The last Democratic president to serve two terms, Obama is increasingly campaigning for his party, acting as a foil to Trump.

Obama was in Georgia supporting Senator Jon Ossoff, the Democratic incumbent whose race appears to have shifted to safer ground, and Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, who is in a competitive race for governor against Rick Jackson, a Republican billionaire.

Trump has campaigned at more than 20 rallies this month and has packed upcoming days with more travel.

The president has kept his focus on states that he won handily two years ago as Americans confront record fuel prices, rising costs and an unpopular war in Iran.

Trump has lately intensified his anti-Muslim rhetoric against Democratic Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who told a crowd at an event in Wyandotte, “They want to point to me and my name. They’re doing this because they’re trying to distract us.”

“Michiganders are big-hearted. We’re open-minded. We don’t care as much how you pray; rather, we care what you pray for,” he said.

Also hitting the road was US Vice President JD Vance, who campaigned in North Carolina, where Republicans have been pessimistic about retaining a Senate seat.

Former national party chair Michael Whatley faces Democrat Roy Cooper, a former governor, in the race to succeed retiring Republican Senator Thom Tillis.

“I don’t just want the American dream for me or for my generation. I want it for you, and I want it for the generation that comes after us. I want young people to be able to afford a home,” Vance told a rally in Kinston, North Carolina.

“I want my kids to raise a family in a country that is vibrant and thriving and free and prosperous.”

-with AAP