Obama: I’m ‘pretty good’ at memes

President Obama thinks he’s better at internet culture than being a “sound-bite politician for the nightly news.” 

{mosads}”I think part of the reason that I have been successful, though, despite maybe not always fitting my message into the pre-packaged formulas, is there is this whole other media ecology out there of the internet and Instagram and memes and talk shows and comedy, and I’m pretty good at that,” Obama said during a recent Business Insider interview with presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. 

“I [give] maybe the long-winded speeches that not everybody reads, but I can also do a slow jam on Jimmy Fallon better than most.” 

He said his humor paired with appearances on talks shows and comedy shows “makes up for the fact that I’m not a sound-bite politician for the nightly news.”

“And as a consequence I think I’m able to reach a lot of folks, despite the fact that the conventional news media sometimes says, ‘You know, this speech is too long,’ or ‘It’s too complicated,’ or ‘He needs to have better sound bites,’ or what have you,” Obama said. 

“Because they’re not seeing me on ‘Between Two Ferns’ trying to sell the Affordable Care Act to young people, and the fact that we’re getting millions of hits on something that is not on conventional TV.”