*President Obama answered a lot of pressing questions during his visit to “Jimmy Kimmel Live” on Thursday – including whether or not he has called Kanye West’s home phone, as the rapper recently claimed, if aliens really exist in Area 52 and if there’s something he can do to shorten those long-a** CVS receipts.
The president also joked about the perks and restrictions he faces, revealing that he’s not allowed to use cellphones that have recorders in them. (Hence his ever-present BlackBerry.) He also noted that he can visit the dentist in the White House basement but doesn’t text and is not allowed to drive.
Kimmel asked if that was because you have to have a birth certificate to get a driver’s license.
Obama – whom Kimmel introduced as the “first Kenyan-born Muslim Socialist ever elected president” – deadpanned that Kenyans “drive on the other side” of the road.
Asked if there was any truth to Kanye’s claim that Obama calls his home number, which the rapper told students during a recent speech at Oxford University, the president basically said…no:
Kimmel pulled out a long scroll-of-a-receipt from CVS for his purchase of one Snickers bar and asked Obama if there was something he could do about its excessive length:
With Sean Penn waiting in the wings, Obama said he was quite familiar with Penn’s 1982 coming-of-age comedy “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”
“I lived it,” Obama said. “I didn’t just see it.”
Jimmy also tried to get the President to talk about aliens:
Obama’s appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” fulfilled a commitment the White House made after he had to postpone an appearance last year.
There were a couple of serious moments. Kimmel got the President to discuss his Student Aid Bill of Rights, and asked about Wednesday night’s shooting of two police officers in racially tense Ferguson, Missouri, just days after he had delivered a speech on racial healing in Selma, Alabama.
“What had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable and was worthy of protest, but there was no excuse for criminal acts,” he said.
“Whoever fired those shots should not detract from the issue – they are criminals, they need to be arrested. And then what we need to do is make sure that like-minded, good-spirited people on both sides – law enforcement, who have a terrifically tough job, and people who understandably don’t want to be stopped and harassed just because of their race – that they are able to work together to come up with some good answers.”
The President even participated in a “Mean Tweets” segment, which has celebrities reading hostile Twitter comments about themselves. After the experience, Obama told Kimmel those tweets were relatively tame, adding: “You should see what the Senate says about me.”
After the “Kimmel” taping, Obama attended a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at the Santa Monica home of Chris Silbermann, president of ICM Partners, one of the top talent agencies in Hollywood. The event was closed to the press, but a Democratic official said the event attracted about 25 people who each paid up to $33,400.
Today, Obama is flying to Phoenix to hold a roundtable event on veterans’ health care.
