"President and Mrs. Obama built/has a ten foot Wall around their DC mansion/compound. I agree, totally necessary for their safety and security. The US needs the same thing, slightly larger version!" EFE news quoted Trump as saying on Sunday.
Trump made the comparison amid the controversy generated by his adamant demand for lawmakers to allocate $5 billion in the federal budget to build portions of the wall, a stance that led to a partial - and ongoing - shutdown of the government after consensus could not be reached on the matter by Republican and Democratic legislators.
Specifically, the partial shutdown affects some 25 percent of the government, 10 government departments, including Transportation and Justice, as well as dozens of national parks, which normally are huge tourist attractions over any and all holidays.
Some 800,000 of the 2.1 million federal works have been idled and will not receive paychecks while their portions of the government remain closed due to lack of approved funding.
After the Obamas left the White House in January 2017, they leased a nine-bedroom, eight-bath home in the Kalorama neighborhood, one of the capital's most select districts.
Built in the 1920s and renovated in 2011, the home has some 763 square meters (8,200 square feet) of floor space, rents for $22,000 per month and is valued at between $5.4 million and $6 million, according to the specialized real estate company Zillow.
The Congress leader emaphasised that unemployed people in their respective countries had a lot of expectations from populist leaders like Trump and Modi, and voted them to power. But, their hopes were later dashed as they were not provided jobs.
At an interaction here on Saturday with Indian Journalists' Association here, Gandhi said: "The people who support Trump, Modi and other leaders, or more populist leaders, are doing so because they are angry.
[caption id="attachment_317818" align="alignleft" width="497"] Pic Credit: newskarnataka.com[/caption]
"And they are angry because they don't have a job. Modi, instead of calming this anger and accepting that there is a job problem... he does something unpatriotic, he takes that anger and utilises it for himself and he damages our country," he added.
Gandhi said neither the Western World or India is able to solve its job crisis for the blue collar part of society.
"That is leading to anger and that is what Modi rides on. The honourable thing to do is to go to his country and accept that there is a problem and said 'yes you are angry, I am your leader, I am going to bring you together and we are going to solve the problem'," he said.
"Modi is not going to give you a solution. They (Trump and Modi) have created enormous amount of damage and a new breed of person has to repair this damage and solve their problem," he added.