President Obama joked with Ellen DeGeneres that the talk show host had pulled a “pretty cheap stunt” when her Oscars selfie broke the Twitter record he set on Election Night in 2012.
“I don’t know if you know this, but I was aiming to break your record of re-tweets and I apologize for doing it,” DeGeneres told Obama, who was appearing on her show to promote enrollment on the ObamaCare exchanges. “But I broke your retweet record.”
{mosads}“I heard about that. I thought it was a pretty cheap stunt myself. Getting a bunch of celebrities in the background … feeding them pizza,” Obama said.
DeGeneres took the picture with a number of celebrities at the Oscars, including Jennifer Lawrence, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts and Kevin Spacey.
The talk show host asked Obama if he watched Spacey’s hit Netflix show “House of Cards,” which depicts behind-the-scenes political dealings in Washington.
Obama admitted he did, but said “life in Washington is a little more boring than displayed on the screen.”
“If you followed me most of my day is sitting in a room listening to a bunch of folks in gray suits talking about a whole bunch of stuff that wouldn’t make great television,” Obama said.
“There is not much dancing in the Situation Room,” he added, in a nod to DeGeneres’s request that guests dance on her show.
“What about that ‘Let’s Move’ campaign?” DeGeneres shot back, telling the president he should require his staff to dance.
Obama went on to pitch enrollment on the ObamaCare exchanges to viewers of the show, asking moms repeatedly to nag their children to check out the health insurance exchanges.
“Especially all the moms out there who may have young people — 26, 27, do not have health insurance, but they think they’re invincible and nothing’s ever going to happen to ‘em — what we’ve said is you never know what life is going to throw at you,” Obama said.
The DeGeneres interview is part of a push by the White House to increase enrollment in the ObamaCare exchanges ahead of the March 31 deadline.
The president also recently filmed a video with actor-comedian Zach Galifianakis to promote ObamaCare.
On Thursday, Obama will also sit for an interview with sports talk radio host Colin Cowherd.