President Obama on Friendship with George Clooney from ETOnline

President Obama on Friendship with George Clooney from ET Online

President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama are no stranger to celebrity support and they're opening up to ET about perhaps their most famous Hollywood cheerleader -- George Clooney.

The president calls Clooney a "wonderful guy" while the first lady reveals that she, like many of her fellow Americans, finds Clooney "cute."
Michelle says that, oddly enough, she never seems to be around when George and her husband get together. "It's a conspiracy … All the meetings, I just happen to be busy," Michelle jokes. The president concurs, "Michelle is always frustrated because a lot of the events that George has been involved in, for some reason, she has something else going on."

The president says that his staff mysteriously always congregates when "Gorgeous George" visits the White House: "I will say that the couple of times he's come to the White House, I notice that the staff suddenly is circling around my office. They've got memos they need to make sure I see right away."

In all seriousness, however, the president tells ET, "The truth is we got to know each other because of a substantive issue. He is a terrific advocate on behalf of the people of Darfur, and to the people of Sudan who've been brutalized for a long time. And so when I was a senator -- this was well before I was president -- that was an issue that I was working together on a bipartisan basis, and George, who had traveled there, done documentaries there, and was very well-informed, came to testify in Congress. And so we got to know each other, and he is a good man, and a good friend."

But the president says that Clooney, who hosted a fundraiser for the Obama re-election campaign in May that reportedly raised almost $15 million, doesn't take their working relationship too far: "He's very protective about not bothering me. And he's also sensitive to the fact that, you know, that if he's around a lot, then somehow it'll be tagged as 'Obama hanging out with Hollywood stars,' and that's not who he is. But he's a good person." For more with the president and first lady, tune in to Monday night's ET.

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Thanks SillyGirl! President Obama probably schedules Michelle's events away knowing George is coming! But, she got to sit by him at the WHCD!!!

they both seem really funny !

That's such a great thing for the pres to say about George. I didn't know that George had been to the White House that often.

I watched this tonight when I got home from work. Michelle Obama was so funny and cute - going on about how it seems every time George was around she was scheduled to be somewhere else!

And then President Obama's comment about how when George was at the White House so many staffers suddenly would be circling his office with important memos he had to see right away. (Or something like that it's probably on the video)!

Good thing in that respect that George is pretty well grounded and hasn't let all the hoopla that surrounds him go to his head!

Thanks Henway for finding this one:

So nice to see this positive report, all I've seen in the media of late likes to put a negative spin to their friendship.

Obama was G friend before he is P ! Paul Newman too WOW

Republicans can be funny too hehe

what a night!!!!