Barack Obama just released a Star Wars Day promotional video for his upcoming Obama Presidential Center — featuring none other than Mark Hamill, a.k.a. Luke Skywalker — and it might be the most embarrassing thing either of them has done since, well, the last embarrassing thing they did. Which was yesterday. And the day before that.

Holy cringe. We’re talking weapons-grade awkwardness here, folks. The kind of video that makes you instinctively reach for the remote even though you’re watching it on your phone. Obama and Hamill mugging for the camera like two guys who peaked decades ago and desperately need you to remember it.

Here’s the setup: the Obama Presidential Center opens June 19th in Chicago, and apparently the marketing team decided the best way to drum up excitement was to have a 74-year-old actor who last played a relevant character when Reagan was in office do a little Star Wars bit with a former president whose approval rating is now roughly equal to the temperature inside a Chicago winter.

“May the Fourth be with you!” Get it? Because it’s Star Wars Day? Comedy gold, people. Somebody got paid six figures for that concept.

Now, we need to talk about the building itself for a second. Have you seen this thing? It looks like someone dropped a giant trash can in the middle of Jackson Park. That’s not us being mean — that’s the consensus from basically everyone who’s seen it, including people who voted for Obama twice. One commenter on X described it perfectly as “a giant trash can,” and honestly, that’s generous. We’ve seen more architecturally inspiring Costcos.

(To be fair, there’s a certain poetic justice in a monument to the Obama presidency looking like something you throw things away in.)

The video dropped on X and went viral immediately — but not in the way the Obama Foundation was hoping. The replies were, as one observer put it, “absolutely merciless.” People weren’t sharing it because they were excited about the center. They were sharing it the same way you’d share a video of someone falling off a treadmill at the gym. Pure entertainment at someone else’s expense.

“May the cringe be off the charts,” wrote one commenter. Another called it “an absolute disaster for them.” We scrolled through hundreds of replies looking for someone — anyone — who was genuinely excited about this video. We’re still scrolling.

But here’s what really makes this whole thing perfect: Mark Hamill. This is a guy who spent the entire Trump era tweeting resistance slogans and comparing himself to an actual rebel fighter because he played one in a movie forty years ago. He called Trump every name in the book. He did dramatic readings of Trump tweets like he was performing Shakespeare. He turned his entire public persona into “angry celebrity who can’t accept election results.”

And now? Now he’s doing promotional videos for a presidential vanity project that nobody asked for, in a city where people are dodging bullets on their way to work. Great use of the Force there, Luke.

You know what Chicago could actually use? Not a $700 million monument to Barack Obama’s ego. Maybe some cops. Maybe some functioning schools. Maybe a mayor who doesn’t make Lori Lightfoot look competent by comparison. But sure — let’s build a temple to the guy who told us “you didn’t build that” and then built the most expensive presidential center in American history.

The whole thing is a perfect snapshot of where the Democratic Party is right now. Out of power, out of ideas, and reduced to trotting out aging celebrities to generate buzz for projects that regular Americans couldn’t care less about. Obama was supposed to be the future of the party. Now he’s doing buddy-comedy bits with Luke Skywalker to sell tickets to his own museum.

Meanwhile, Trump is actually running the country. Securing the border. Cutting taxes. Making deals. You know — president stuff. But please, tell us more about the gift shop at the Obama Center.

The best part is that this video was clearly produced by a professional team. Someone wrote a script. Someone set up cameras. Someone did lighting. Multiple people watched the final cut and said, “Yes, this is good. Let’s post this.” And then the entire internet collectively hit them with a “no” so loud it registered on the Richter scale.

That’s what happens when you live inside a bubble so thick that not a single person on your team has the guts to say, “Sir, this might not play well.” Nobody in Obama’s orbit told him the truth because nobody in Obama’s orbit lives in reality. They all think he’s still the coolest guy on the planet. Spoiler alert: he’s not. He’s a retired politician doing cringe videos with Han Solo’s buddy.

(Wait — Hamill was Luke, not Han. Apologies to Harrison Ford, who at least has the dignity to not do this kind of stuff.)

So congratulations to the Obama Foundation on creating the most ratioed video of 2026 so far. May the Fourth was supposed to be their big moment. Instead, it became a masterclass in how not to promote anything, ever. The Galactic Empire had better PR than this.

We’ll leave you with this thought: a presidential center is supposed to celebrate a legacy. And the fact that the best they could come up with was a Star Wars gimmick tells you everything you need to know about what that legacy actually is — style over substance, celebrity over competence, and vibes over results. Always has been. Always will be.