President Barack Obama lamented on Friday that he’s been unfairly criticized for wearing loose jeans.
“I’ve been unfairly maligned about my jeans,” he joked in a radio interview with Ryan Seacrest. “The truth is, generally I look very sharp in jeans.”
One fashion faux pas at the 2009 MLB All-Star baseball game was a costly learning experience, he added.
“There was one episode like four years ago in which I was wearing some loose jeans mainly because I was out on the pitcher’s mound and I didn’t want to feel confined while I was pitching and I think I’ve paid my penance for that,” he explained. “I got whacked pretty good. Since that time, my jeans fit very well.”
The President phoned in to “On Air with Ryan Seacrest” to encourage young people to sign up for Obamacare ahead of the March 31 deadline. A similar interview on “Between Two Ferns” with comedian Zach Galifianakis went viral earlier this week, driving substantial traffic to HealthCare.gov.
“Zach actually was pretty nervous,” Obama said about the interview. “It was funny to watch because this whole ‘Between Two Ferns’ schtick – which I wasn’t familiar with before my staff told me that we had been pitched to do this – his whole character is to go after the guest and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, ‘I wonder what happens here if I cross the line?’ But we had a great time.”
Obama also commented on a recent shopping trip to a Gap store in New York, where he urged employers to follow the retailer’s lead and raise employees’ minimum wage to $10.10 per hour.
“They thought for a dad, I displayed reasonably good taste,” he said. “The key thing, the first thing I did, was walk in and said, ‘We’re just getting a sweater or a blouse or a T-shirt’ because when you start getting into pants or shoes, then suddenly you’re doomed.”
To be fair, here’s a recent photo of Obama wearing some skinnier jeans (while discussing the situation in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin):
Listen to the full Seacrest interview below:
