Snapchat to air Obama interview
President Obama is burnishing his reputation as a tech-savvy commander in chief by becoming the first president to use Snapchat.
Obama sat for an interview with Snapchat during a recent campaign rally for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton. The full conversation will air a week before Election Day Tuesday on the social media platform, where it will be available for 48 hours only.
{mosads}Snapchat released a preview of the interview on Monday, in which Obama, sans tie, gives a plug for Clinton directed at young voters.
“Hillary has been on the right side of every issue, and she’s fought on behalf of people who really need somebody to fight for them — that should be inspiring enough,” Obama told Peter Hamby, a former CNN journalist who is now Snapchat’s head of news.
The interview is part of Obama’s aggressive final-week blitz to boost Clinton’s campaign. The president plans to spend four days on the road this week stumping for his former secretary of State in several crucial battleground states.
But he’s also tailoring his pitch to millennials in a series of media interviews. He’s set to appear on former “Daily Show” correspondent Samantha Bee’s show Monday night on TBS and is also sitting for an interview with HBO’s Bill Maher.
Snapchat is perhaps the most ideal platform to achieve his goal. The app has 60 million daily active users in the United States, and it’s heavily used by young people. Snapchat reaches more than 4 in 10 Americans between the ages of 18 and 34, according to the company.
During a recent appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” Obama said his 15-year-old daughter, Sasha, taught him the hard way how to use Snapchat during a family dinner.
“I started talking to Michelle about the implications of social media and what all this means,” he said. “Come to find out she was recording us the whole time. And then sent to her friends afterwards, ‘This is my dad lecturing us on the meaning of social media.’ ”
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