Thursday on Morning Joe the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, Ben Smith, attempted to justify President Obama’s recent stunt in a commercial that mocked the difficulties people face when registering to vote. Naturally, making a joke of it in a BuzzFeed video was Obama’s way of addressing the complexities of voter registration. The perplexed hosts of Morning Joe vocalized how “disturbed” they were by the video. Ben Smith’s response? “YOLO,” short for “You Only Live Once.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: How did you get him to do that? I mean journalists can't get this guy to go sit down and like, ask, answer questions about Syria. And you’ve got him untangling headphones. How are you that powerful?
BEN SMITH: And particularly this year when you have millennials like Mitt Romney so alienated from both parties, I think it is, like, a good moment to try to get them to do it. Why President Obama was willing to participate in this.
SCARBOROUGH: Why?
SMITH: I mean I think it’s late in his second-term, I think it’s a good cause to try to get people to register and he does seem like there’s kind of a ‘YOLO’ moment here late in the presidency where he's willing to experiment a bit with media.
(Yes, when given the choice to discuss the escalating Syrian refugee crisis or portray the difficulties of voter registration by untangling headphones, Barack Obama chose the latter).
Obama wasted plenty of time “experimenting with the media” long before he was “late in the presidency.” In January 2015, our commander in chief was widely criticized for doing an embarrassing interview with GloZell Green, a woman famous for eating fruit loops out of a bathtub. In February 2015, he was also featured in a BuzzFeed video where he used a selfie stick and talked to himself in the mirror.
If only BuzzFeed asked him to make a video on his strategy for defeating ISIS, people would have a better understanding of his foreign policy positions. We’ll hold our breath on that one.
View Full Transcript Here:
06-30-16 MSNBC Morning Joe
07:23:08 AM – 7:23:51 AMJOE SCARBOROUGH: Still ahead, president Obama demonstrates to Buzz Feed a few things that are really tough to register--about out registering to vote, Mika.
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Mm-hmm. Including naming every "Game of Thrones" character who has died.
SCARBOROUGH: Oh boy.
[Video clip from Buzz Feed commercial on registering to vote]
BRZEZINSKI: He’s pretty good at that! The friendship bracelet.
SCARBOROUGH: What? What’s he doing?
WILLIE GEIST: What happened?
SCARBOROUGH: What’s he doing?
BRZEZINSKI: Buzz Feed editor-in-chief Ben Smith joins the conversation to explain what we just showed you.
SCARBOROUGH: Okay. I need to—I need that explained to me.
BRZEZINSKI: Which I wish he hadn't done.
…7:29:51 AM – 7:30:53 AM
SCARBOROUGH: Can you ask Ben.
BRZEZINSKI: Okay Ben.
SCARBOROUGH: I'm a little – I’m disturbed by what I saw.
BRZEZINSKI: I mean he's the president of the United States.
SCARBOROUGH: He’s playing operation.
BRZEZINSKI: And untangling headphones.
SCARBOROUGH: Come on man.
BRZEZINSKI: What is going on?
SCARBOROUGH: What are you doing?
BEN SMITH: I mean I would say I have—
SCARBOROUGH: How did you get him to do that? I mean journalists can't get this guy to go sit down and like—
BRZEZINSKI: [Laughing]
SCARBOROUGH: --like ask, answer questions about Syria. And you’ve got him untangling headphones. How are you that powerful?
SMITH: I guess I have two answers to this. One, you know one is that, like, looking back you know to sort of MTV and Rock the Vote in the nineties, there’s a role for media companies to speak to young people to try to get them to register to vote.
SCARBOROUGH: Right.
SMITH: And particularly this year when you have millennials like Mitt Romney so alienated from both parties, I think it is, like, a good moment to try to get them to do it. Why President Obama was willing to participate in this.
SCARBOROUGH: Why?
SMITH: I mean I think it’s late in his second-term, I think it’s a good cause to try to get people to register and he does seem like there’s kind of a ‘YOLO’ moment here late in the presidency where he's willing to experiment a bit with media.
SCARBOROUGH: Willie Geist.
WILLIE GEIST: There’s another acronym that we were using before.
BRZEZNISKI: [Laughs]
GEIST: There’s YOLO and then there’s—well I won’t say it.
[Laughter around table]
GEIST: But it starts with a D. You don't care at the end of your term as you used to.
