It seems fitting that someone paid to cover celebrities would freak out over meeting the “celebrity President” and that’s precisely what E! News co-host Terrence J did when he told Arsenio Hall, on Wednesday, that Barack Obama was “the coolest guy in the world!”
The E! News co-host gushed that he was able to sneak-in some selfies with Obama and the “super-cool” Joe Biden on a recent trip to the White House. The sad thing is the entertainment reporter’s reaction isn’t all that different from those of so-called hard news reporters that cover this administration.
The following is a transcript of the exchange that aired on the May 13 edition of the syndicated Arsenio Hall Show:
ARSENIO HALL: And you go from 106 & Park to the White House? Could you ever have imagined your life?
TERRENCE J: Who would’ve known? I got to meet the President the other day, ya’ll! Crazy!
HALL: We have a still. We have - oh look, look, look. Oh!
TERRENCE J: Well you see what had happened was the Secret Service already told - because I was the only with the phone that they had let in.
HALL: Right.
TERRENCE J: And the Secret Service was like “You got to chill out with that phone. We letting you slide, chill out with that phone.”
HALL: Wait, wait! Some people can’t bring their phones?
TERRENCE J: No for this event you were not supposed to bring your phone. I kinda snuck it in to the, to the - yeah I snuck in a phone to the White House. But yeah! So they, you know I wasn’t supposed to take the phone and then I saw the President. I was like, “Let me just take a selfie!” And he was, he looked around, he was like “Go ahead, take it!” And so that was the photo. The President is the coolest guy in the world! And everybody at the White House is super cool. So I got-
HALL: Yes! Wow! You’re blessed, you’re blessed. As if that wasn’t enough you met Joe?
TERRENCE J: Yeah man.
HALL: Vice President Joe Biden?
TERRENCE J: Yeah! Shout outs to my boy Maurice Owens. He walked me around. So I’m walking past the Oval Office, walked past the Situation Room and then I see Uncle, uh, Vice President Joe Biden walking through the hallway. And I’m like-
HALL: Uncle? Uncle Joe?
TERRENCE J: Uncle Joe! I call him Uncle Joe. I’m sorry! I got-
HALL: Ahhh!
TERRENCE J: I’m like, I’m like, “Mr. Vice President can I take a selfie? And he looked at me, he was like: “Only if you let me take it.” So he grabbed the phone and we took it together. It was a great moment. He was super cool. And then we talked about, you know, world policies and a lot of other top secret stuff that I’m not authorized to tell you guys. So that was the rest of the diplomatic conversation.
— Geoffrey Dickens is Deputy Research Director at the Media Research Center. Follow Geoffrey Dickens on Twitter. [1]