On the fundraising trail last night for the Democratic National Committee, President Obama insisted to a celebrity-studded crowd in New York that his presidency “has never been about me.”
“As I enter into my last year in office, some supporters started getting nostalgic, and so we’ll take pictures and they’ll say, oh, Barack, I wish you could run another term,” he said. “And I explain — no, first of all, not everybody says that. But I explain, A, it’s unconstitutional. George Washington set a good example. B, Michelle would not permit it, even if it were constitutional. And, C, this has never been about me.”
The event at The Richard Rogers Theatre, selected because it was showing the musical Hamilton, drew actors including Kerry Washington and Vincent D’Onofrio, and politicians including Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.).
Obama quipped that the musical on the first Treasury secretary is “the only thing that I think Dick Cheney and I agree on.”
“You know when you’ve brought Barack Obama and Dick Cheney together that you’ve accomplished something. That is a cultural landmark,” he added.
He added that the show “reminds us of the vital, crazy, kinetic energy that’s at the heart of America — that people who have a vision and a set of ideals can transform the world.”
Obama rattled off his standard policy stump, with special aim at Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) for bringing a snowball onto the Senate floor in February to argue that terrorism is a greater risk than climate change.
“And the planet is warming; 99 percent of scientists have said it’s warming. And we’ve got the Republican chairman of the Senate Energy and Environment Committee carrying a snowball into the Senate chambers to show that there is still snow and that climate change isn’t happening. I am not making that up. That’s what happened. That’s what happened. That’s crazy,” Obama said. “I was going to quote Kanye, but I can’t because this is a family audience. But it’s cray.”
That’s a reference to a lyric in Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “N*ggas In Paris”: “
“And by the way, the same thing is true on foreign policy. I don’t want to keep on going, but have you noticed that every one of these candidates say, Obama is weak,” the president continued. “‘Putin is kicking sand in his face. When I talk to Putin he’s going to straighten out.’ … And then it turns out they can’t handle a bunch of CNBC moderators at a debate. I mean, let me tell you, if you can’t handle those guys, you know, then I don’t think the Chinese and the Russians are going to be too worried about you.”
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