It's always good to have the comedians on your side — and it looks as if President Obama went out of the way to assure that he did. In recent years, The Daily Show host Jon Stewart made at least two secret visits to the White House to meet with Obama, both times at the president's specific request, Politico reports.
"The White House itself was quite interested in at least explaining its side of the story to Jon Stewart, up to and including the president," former Obama White House chief economic adviser Austan Goolsbee said. Obama summoned Stewart to his office in October 2011, during the debt ceiling crisis, and again in February 2014, before threatening Russia not to make any further moves on Ukraine. Obama has appeared on Stewart's show seven times.
"I can't say that because Jon Stewart was unhappy policy changed. But I can say that he had forceful arguments, they were arguments that we knew would be heard and deserved to be answered," David Axelrod, another former Obama aide, told Politico.
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