barack obama

President Obama and Bear Grylls are basically besties now, and they've got the selfie to prove it.

As part of Obama's three-day trip to Alaska to study the impact of climate change on the region, he is spending time with survivalist Bear Grylls and exploring the wild.

@POTUS such special moments all through this journey. & what you are doing to help protect our planet is inspiring.

A photo posted by Bear Grylls (@beargrylls) on Sep 2, 2015 at 6:29am PDT

Ahead of Obama's trip, he finalized a name change of Mount McKinley. It is known officially known as Denali, the original name given to the highest point in North America by Alaskan natives.

Since starting his Alaskan adventure, the White House Instagram has been posting other pictures of Obama in the wilderness.

The President joins celebs like Kate Winslet, Zac Efron and Michelle Rodriguez appearing on Running Wild With Bear Grylls.

President Obama is officially the #YOLO president.

Ahead of his scheduled three-day trip to Alaska to see the effects of climate change, Obama announced that Mount McKinley, America's highest point, will now officially be known as Denali.

The mountain was originally known as Denali by Alaskan natives before it was renamed to honor President William McKinley in 1917. But many Alaskans have continued to call it by its original name, and the state has been petitioning the federal government to change the name since 1975.

Some Ohioans think this is a Miserable idea, since McKinley hails from the state.

But this isn't even the craziest part of Obama's trip. NBC has announced that the president will film an episode of Running Wild With Bear Grylls.

Obama will learn survival skills and talk about environment issues with Bear Grylls, the survivalist who has recently filmed with stars Kate Winslet and Michelle Rodriguez.

No word yet if Bear plans on drinking Obama's presidential urine.

Wouldn't you like to see the letters people send to President Obama? Well now you can see at least some of them.

The White House launched a new Tumblr Aug. 20 with just that intention. It's called letterstopresidentobama and it will feature a selection of the correspondence sent to Obama's desk.

Obviously, many, if not most, of those letters would be pretty critical of the President's executive decision-making, so you can't expect this selection to be altogether representative. However, as they say in the introduction, the hope is to bring attention to the views of some Americans.

Today, the whitehouse is launching a new Tumblr account called "Letters to President Obama," where we'll highlight letters that Americans have written to the President. Follow along here.

Below, Natoma Canfield – a cancer survivor from Ohio – shares what happened when she wrote the President a letter encouraging him to "stay focused" in his efforts to reform America's health care system.

They then shared the letter of a cancer survivor and her appreciation for the President's commitment to affordable healthcare.

It'd be super interesting to see the letters balance each other out, to give representation of this increasingly partisan country. Still, the fact that real people are writing real letters is news enough.

President Obama's tech savvy staff want you to know the Commander in Chief is up on modern music, so they released his Spotify playlist Aug. 14.

According to the description in the playlist:

President hand-picked his favorite songs for a summer playlist. Take a listen to his 20 picks for a summer night.

With that description, it's a little strange that the first song listed is John Coltrane's My Favorite Things. Don't get me wrong, this is actually one of my personal favorite Coltrane songs, but it's most definitely a Christmas-time song, right?

Things pick up a little bit, getting way more modern with a Beyoncé track from her newest album featuring the incredible Frank Ocean.

It's an eclectic list of oldies and contemporary-ish songs from a broader variety of artists that we would expect. There's Nina Simone, Erika Badu and some Miles Davis. Never would have picked Obama for a Leonard Cohen fan, either. That's some good taste.

Things mostly stay at an easy, grooving pace with The Lumineers Stubborn Love as the wildest song on the list.

The weirdest track to us is Frank Sinatra's The Best is Yet to Come. Nothing against Ol' Blue Eyes, it just doesn't seem to fit the rest.

You can rock along to some presidential jams over here and tell us what you think about the President's musical tastes.

President Obama knows that Donald Trump is probably stressing out over the Aug. 5 first Republican primary debate, so he decided to offer some advice.

Jimmy Fallon's Donald Trump impression might be as weak as his ring finger, but the jokes that spring from this little interaction stand on their own. Plus, half the fun of watching a Jimmy Fallon impression is seeing how far away he can get from the real thing.

This phone preparation covers a great many topics between the sitting president and the man who led the birther cause.

They joked on Chris Christie, Trump got his own Cecil the lion trophy and the whole thing ended with an autotuned duet of OMI's Cheerleader.

Trump's probably had a busy enough week, what with answering all those phone calls after his cell number went public.

That surely won't stop the fireworks from blowing up in tomorrow's debate as the top 10 polled contenders for the Republican party nomination spar for a chance to say anything slightly meaningful in the most presidential way possible.

President Barack Obama came back for the seventh time to The Daily Show July 21 before John Stewart takes his leave from the show after 16 years as host.

A candid Obama answered Stewart's ongoing questions about the last year's continuing Veterans Affairs controversy, the Iran nuclear deal and senioritis in his last 18 months in the oval office.

They also talked about Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign and shared thoughts on how to introduce more civic interaction.

In one of the more striking uses of Obama's power, the president did threaten an executive order that would keep Stewart behind the desk of the The Daily Show, stopping Stewart's impending Aug. 6 departure. Stewart had to claim that it was more of a state's right issue and that he would still retire from the show.



Obama's seven visits to The Daily Show has spanned almost the whole of his political career. He first showed up in 2005 while he was still an Illinois senator and would continue to stop by on election cycles and off.

"You've been a great gift to the country," Obama said to Stewart at last night's appearance.

You can watch the whole episode here.

President Obama receives his fair share of criticism online, but he’s embracing all the hate in a new edition of “Mean Tweets” on Jimmy Kimmel Live.

Watch him react to a #ThanksObama and someone who does’t approve of his dad-jeans style.

“Is there any way we could fly Obama to some golf course halfway around the world and just leave him there?” writes one girl.

“I think that’s a great idea,” he says.

You can also watch Kimmel’s post-Mean Tweets interview with Obama below, in which he says he didn’t think those messages were very mean at all.

“You should see what the Senate says about me,” he says.

He also talks about why he still has a BlackBerry and how he doesn’t actually use Twitter himself.

Talk about a government takeover!

"The Colbert Report" was broadcasting from Washington D.C. on Monday when President Obama appeared on stage to announce that he was stepping in for Stephen Colbert in his segment "The Word."

Since Colbert had take so many shots at his job over the years, he said, he wanted a shot at his. And because he is the president, he naturally changed it to "The Decree."

"Nation, as you know, I, Stephen Colbert, have never cared for our president," Obama says to kick off the piece called "To Health in a Handbasket."

While discussing his health care plan, he made fun of himself in the third person, Republicans and even the "fake news" channel "Fox News."

The Colbert Report is in its final stretch with the last episode to air December 18.