Opinion: Obama is Brad Pitt’s cousin? And 5 other political oddities from ‘The View’
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Seems like every time a politician goes on ‘The View,’ something weird happens.
Leading up to the last presidential election, ABC said it would ramp up the political coverage on its signature daytime talk show. Staying true to its promise, ‘The View’ will have President Obama on Thursday’s show.
In anticipation, The Ticket is taking a look back at some of the strangest and memorable moments from the most recent political cycle.
6. Bill Clinton: Hillary didn’t want to be VP, but she would have taken it anyway. President Clinton’s wife loved being a N.Y. senator so much, he said in his September 2008 interview, but she would have begrudgingly taken a job offer as vice president only because it’s her ‘duty.’ She would also take, as we later found out, a job as secretary of State.
5. Michelle Obama: ‘I have to be greeted properly. Fist bump, please.’ The now-first lady apparently loved to break out the ‘terrorist fist jabs’ at any opportune moment, as shown in her June 2008 appearance on ‘The View.’
4. John McCain: Sarah Palin ‘will reform all of Washington.’ Barbara Walters then asked McCain in the September 2008 interview: How? ‘By doing what she did in Alaska,’ he said. Of course, that was before abruptly leaving her post.
3. Barbara Walters forgot she had interviewed Barack Obama before. In July 2007, Walters recalled a conversation with Obama in which she had urged him to come on her show (which he eventually did the following year). Obama reminded her that he had already done an interview on ‘The View.’
Walters recalled saying: ‘Well, obviously, I wasn’t on that day.’
She was.
2. A rich Barbara Walters grimaces at Obama ending tax breaks for the rich. Discussing Obama’s plans to roll back tax breaks benefiting wealthy Americans passed under President George W. Bush, co-host Sherri Shepherd pointed to Walters, and said, ‘You gonna be in trouble, Barbara.’
Walters reacted with a cockeyed look and a tinge of shock. ‘You rich as I don’t-know-what, Barbara,’ Shepherd added.
1. Not only is Obama a ladies’ man, he’s ‘ninth cousins something removed’ from Brad Pitt. Practically from the moment Barack Obama stepped onto the set of ‘The View’ in 2008, he was showered with compliments. (‘We thought you were very sexy-looking,’ Walters said. And his speeches ‘captivated so many,’ and, ‘transcended party lines,’ according to co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck.)
‘I am surrounded by women,’ Obama said to laughs just before sitting down on the signature couch. That’s probably because he’s somehow related to Brad Pitt, as the hosts pointed out.
Then, in a hard-hitting question from Joy Behar, she asks, ‘How tough are ya?’
‘I’m skinny, but I’m tough,’ Obama said.
Now, who else is psyched for Thursday’s show?
-- Mark Milian
twitter.com/markmilian
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