Bill Maher Teases President About Smoking – Obama Winks Saying He’s Quit [VIDEO]

Comedian Bill Maher finally secured an appearance by President Barack Obama on his show Real TIme. Maher had been talking about inviting the President for a long time, but it wasn’t until last week that it was announced Obama was to give an interview on the show on Friday. Although the show was cut to 18 minutes, the full interview of 37 minutes was also released by Maher online.

Has Obama Quit Smoke? President Winks

Among other things, Maher and Obama spoke about the media, legalizing marijuana, and Donald Trump. Maher criticized the mainstream media for being for-profit and trying to manipulate people’s views. He and Obama agreed that people in general should be more politically involved and make more effort to research issues.

“People are busy, people are stressed. They don’t have the time to follow the intricacies of some debate around Medicare and what’s going on in Syria. When I say I want a government as good as the American people, what I mean by that is that I think people’s instincts – their gut, what they want out of life, how they want to see people treated – is pretty good. The question then becomes how do we get enough information in front of them to be able to make good decisions,” Obama said.

“Look, if I watched Fox News, I probably wouldn’t vote for me either. Because you’ve got this screen, this funhouse mirror, through which people are receiving their information. How to break through that is a real challenge,” he added on the topic of biased media.

On the subject of marijuana, Obama said he was reluctant to legalize it. Maher is a known proponent of legalization, so Obama jokingly asked him if that is a topic that interests him. The President admitted that he is an ex-smoker, and he would not be completely for legalization due the health problems associated with smoking in general. Obama then winked while saying he’s quit, earning big laughs from the audience.

Finally, Obama said he had to go to a Clinton rally in Ohio, but before that he addressed the election with Maher. “The stakes are high,” Obama said. “I will say this: The choice in this election should be really clear. And anybody who is watching your show and was a supporter of mine or a supporter of Bernie or is a progressive generally, this idea that ‘both of them have problems and nothing will change,’ listen… every single issue that we’ve made progress on over the last eight years is going to be on the ballot in the form of this choice.”