First Barack Obama’s daughters grabbed the headlines for rolling their eyes at his jokes during a Thanksgiving turkey pardoning ceremony; now the president has revealed that his family tease him “mercilessly” on all manner of things to try to keep him humble.
During a light-hearted interview with comedian Stephen Colbert, the president insisted the tough love worked but was also compared to a Roman emperor and asked if he thought he was the greatest president ever.
“[They] give me a hard time,” he said of the teasing by Sasha, Malia and his wife, Michelle. “There are no trumpets.”
Colbert himself described the president as Baracus Maximus I, a reference to Republican claims that he exceeded his executive authority by granting legal status to undocumented migrants, and jokingly asked why Obama chose to burn the US constitution.
The president was also pressed on whether he will be remembered as a great president or the greatest president; to which Obama said he’ll leave that to others to decide, just not Colbert.
Yet the unusually candid Obama also spoke for the first time mockingly about his party’s heavy defeat in November’s midterm elections.
“The election didn’t go as it — I would have liked,” he said, according to White House pool reports of the interview, adding: “You noticed I made a little correction there. A little thought-bubble.”
Asked why he thought so many young people didn’t come out to vote, Obama added more seriously: “I think they were disturbed about what was happening in Washington.
“When you look at the issues, young people agree we should raise the minimum wage,” he added. “They agree that we should have equal pay for equal work, they agree that we should be making that sure a family, if a child gets sick, parents can stay without losing their job.”
Colbert responded that job numbers had been increasing because the president hired so many people as defence secretaries. “That’s boosted our numbers a little bit,” acknowledged the president.
During the Comedy Central show the host even attempted to persuade Obama to reveal the nuclear launch codes or at least whether five is one of the numbers. “You’re not going to get close to even one number in the nuclear launch codes,” replied the president.
