BREAKING: Obama finally comes clean about his infamous tan suit “scandal” – and hilariously blames … Larry David!
Barack Obama has finally revealed the “truth” about the greatest scandal of his presidency: the tan suit.
It was all Larry David’s fault.
Obama resurrected one of the most absurd controversies of his White House years for the finale of David’s new HBO comedy, “Life, Larry, and the Pursuit of Unhappiness,” produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions
In the bit, David plays the hapless aide responsible for ruining Obama’s original suit before an important press conference, leaving the president with one fateful alternative.
“It is a great suit,” Obama says, holding up the tan suit as David eggs him on. “Oh boy, oh boy. I think this is the move.”
Obama returns moments later wearing the suit, right down to the striped tie he wore on Aug. 28, 2014. “You sure about this?” Obama asks. “Never been more sure about anything in my life,” David assures him.
As Obama heads off to his press conference, walking past an entire rack of perfectly conventional dark suits, David delivers the punchline: “People are going to be talking about this for a long, long time.”
He was right about that, wasn’t he?
Obama shared the clip himself on Saturday, writing: “People always ask me where the tan suit came from. I think it’s time the truth finally came out.”
For anyone fortunate enough to have forgotten Tan Suitgate, Obama wore the light-colored suit to a White House press briefing in 2014 and some Republicans reacted as if he’d arrived wearing a bathrobe.
Then-Rep. Peter King of New York delivered a response that has aged into comedy all by itself.
“There’s no way, I don’t think, any of us can excuse what the president did yesterday,” King declared at the time. “I mean, you have the world watching.”
What Obama had done was wear a tan suit while talking about the economy and foreign policy. What the Republicans did was try and famously fail to manufacture some sort of scandal involving the Obamas that would stick.
It stuck alright, but not in the way King or Fox News had hoped. 😆
Obama has been laughing about the episode for years. In 2020, he recalled that his “big scandal” was wearing a suit he thought “was pretty sharp,” noting that he’d even worn it to church that spring.
More than a decade later, Obama and David have given the tan suit the treatment it deserves.
Good comedy.