Noted jokester President Obama has already been featured on Zach Galifianakis’s Between Two Ferns, Marc Maron’s WTF podcast, and the White House’s Comedy Thing, so a car-and-coffee date with Jerry Seinfeld was more or less inevitable. To kick off the seventh season of Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Seinfeld took a trip to the White House, where he and POTUS tried to drive a 1963 Corvette Stingray as far as possible and chatted about mostly professional topics. It was all pretty safe, but still delightful. Roll the episode, which debuted Wednesday night, and scope out the highlights below:
On missing Saturdays and anonymity:
Seinfeld: What is it that you really want to do that they don’t let you do?
Obama: I would love to just be taking a walk, and then I run into you and you’re sitting on a bench. Right? And suddenly I say, Hey, Jerry how are you doing? And you say, I’m doing pretty good. What are you doing? Oh nothing, just a Saturday morning. That moment when you lost your anonymity … it’s not something you think about as being valuable.
S: With all due respect, I remember very well not being famous. It wasn’t that great.
O: You think being famous is better … Yes?
S: Yeah.
Obama’s favorite president?
O: Teddy Roosevelt is a cool character. In fact, he may be the guy who would be the most fun to hang out with. He just does crazy stuff … Teddy Roosevelt would go up to Yellowstone Park for like a month and nobody knew where he was — nobody could get in touch with him. Can you imagine that? In office! Sounds pretty good to me.
The most jarring element of becoming president:
O: The thing that really does get to you is after [you’ve been elected], is it’s the first night and you’re sleeping in the White House. It’s not like a hotel room. So you’re looking around, thinking, What the hell is this? That’s how it feels, probably the first week.
His most embarrassing public moment?
O: This [episode] may be it.
What does the president stress-eat?
O: Nachos.
Are the people he deals with idiots or geniuses?
O: When you’re dealing with Congress, it varies. There are going to be some folks there that are foolish, just like there are in comedy.
On golfing with Larry David:
O: I love Larry. When we play golf, he’s a fair-skinned guy — he lathers himself in sunscreen and it’s dripping and it’s caked white all over and it catches parts of his ears and then there’s big globs of it.
On world leaders going crazy:
O: A pretty sizable percentage [are crazy]. And part of what happens is these guys, I think the longer they stay in office, the more likely that is to happen. At a certain point, your feet hurt and you’re having trouble peeing and you have absolute power. [Privilege] really is [toxic].
Oh, and don’t forget about Obamacare:
O: Usually the only reason I do these things is because I’m promoting health care. If you don’t want to sully your show with the interest of getting people with no health care signing up so that — heaven forbid — something happens to them, I understand.
S: Please try Obamacare today.
The rest of the webseries’s current season will include actual comedians Kathleen Madigan, Steve Martin, and Will Ferrell. Catch them here.