President Obama is no stranger to talk-show sets. He is the first sitting president to appear on late-night talk shows, garnering praise and scorn from various camps for doing so. Since his inauguration, he has appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, The Late Show with David Letterman, Oprah, The Colbert Report and The View. Now he has returned to Jimmy Kimmel Live for the first time since he became president.
The POTUS joked right along with Kimmel, riffing on Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail woes, “birthers” and driving. He even participated in one of Kimmel’s recurring skits, reading mean tweets about himself aloud. A press pool report revealed that Obama later quipped that the Tweets were not nearly as mean as “what the Senate says about me.”
Obama was previously scheduled to appear on Kimmel’s show in July of last year, but that visit was canceled after the White House deemed it inappropriate because of the number of international crises unfolding at that time.
Kimmel pointed out the president’s charisma and sense of humor in an interview this week with the Daily Beast, calling Obama “the most intentionally funny president of my lifetime.”
The appearance wasn’t all fluff, however, as the President took time to comment on the recent shooting of police officers in Ferguson, MO.
“There’s no excuse for criminal acts. Whoever fired those shots shouldn’t detract from the issue. They need to be arrested,” he told Kimmel. “And then what we need to do is make sure like-minded, good-spirited people on both sides, law enforcement who have a terrifically tough job and people who understand they don’t want to be stopped and harassed because of their race, that we’re able to work together to try and come up with some good answers.”
Obama will likely continue to be a late-night talk show figure throughout the rest of his presidency and afterward.
#TBT Just two dudes sharing a high five. Watch Jimmy interview President Obama TONIGHT on #Kimmel! #ObamaOnKimmelpic.twitter.com/Qfnvw31ooa
— Jimmy Kimmel Live (@JimmyKimmelLive) March 12, 2015