President Obama said in an interview that will air tonight that he finds the uproar over a dozen Secret Service officers accused of soliciting prostitutes earlier this month while on duty in Colombia to be “a little distracting.”
Obama is the lead guest tonight on an edition of Late Night With Jimmy Fallon taped earlier at the University of North Carolina, where earlier in the day he gave a speech about education and student debt. In his interview with host Jimmy Fallon, which airs at 12:35 a.m. on NBC, Obama praised the Secret Service at large, saying a “couple of knuckleheads shouldn’t detract from what they do.”
More like 12 knuckleheads, in fact, with six agents and uniformed officers having been severed from the agency with another six suspended pending an ongoing internal investigation. Another 12 military personnel who were with the agents in Cartagena ahead of Obama’s visit there for the Summit of the Americas are being scrutinized for their nocturnal activities.
“What these guys were thinking, I don’t know,” Obama told Fallon, according to the Associated Press. “That’s why they’re not there anymore.”
The president also told Fallon he would like to attempt to “slow-jam the news,” according to The Atlantic’s Garance Franke-Ruta. Sorry, Mr. President, but that’s the provenance of Brian Williams.
