Barack Obama doesn’t need to work hard to be beloved by US millennials, but he still goes through the motions—appearing on their web comedy shows (video), guest-editing their magazines, and goofing around with a selfie stick.
Last night (Oct. 24) for the second time, he went on the ABC talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live and read “mean tweets” about himself, including one from Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Watch to the end for Obama’s dig back at The Donald.
In an interview with Kimmel, he offered some more serious criticism of Trump, sharing his shocked reaction to Trump’s words in a leaked Access Hollywood video.
“There is something qualitatively different about the way Donald Trump has operated in the political sphere,” Obama said, contrasting the Republican nominee with the candidates he defeated in 2008 and 2012, John McCain and Mitt Romney, whom he described as “honorable men.”
“But what we haven’t seen before,” Obama went on, “is somebody questioning the integrity of elections and the will of the people. What we haven’t seen before I think is a politics based on putting down, in very explicit terms, Muslim Americans who are patriots, or describing women not in terms of their intellect or their character, but on a 1-to-10 score.”
Kimmel prodded the president on the topic. “When you watch the debate and you watch Donald Trump, do you ever laugh? Do you ever actually laugh?”
“Most of the time,” Obama replied, to a raucous round of applause.