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James Flacco: Obama Confuses ‘The Interview’ Actor With Ravens QB [Video]

By Robert Jonathan
Published on: 08:34 PST, Dec 19, 2014

President Obama apparently got mixed up between actor James Franco and Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco.

The gaffe occurred at today’s end-of-year press conference at the White House in responding to questions about Sony pulling The Interview from theaters after a hack attack purportedly from North Korea. See embed below.

While declining to comment on which movies he’s going to watch while spending the rest of the month vacationing in Hawaii, the president said this in the context of the Sony cyberattack.

“… I think it says something interesting about North Korea that they decided to have the state come out with an all-out attack because of satirical movie starring Seth Rogen and James Flacco. I love Seth and I love James, but the notion that that was a threat to them gives you some sense of the kind of regime we are talking about here…”

Decrying censorship, including self-censorship, Obama also insisted that Sony made a mistake by canceling the release of the film, and executives should have checked with him first. “I would have told them ‘Do not get into a pattern in which you’re intimidated by these kinds of criminal attacks.'”

Obama recently admitted that he spends the mornings watching ESPN, so maybe that’s where the NFL football-related miscue originated. “Perhaps the leader of the free world has his fantasy football championship on his mind and is pondering between Flacco and another quarterback in his quest for greatness,” the Baltimore Sun quipped.

As you might expect, however, the James Flacco comment prompted a huge response on social media, including from the Ravens star himself, as well as someone who apparently jumped on board with a fake Twitter handle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTkuU_rZXWc

Although not nearly as publicized by the media as the flubs made by his Oval Office predecessor George W. Bush or others, Obama has had his share of bloopers.

In March, for example, Obama misspelled the word “respect” during a White House tribute to Aretha Franklin. Some of the other underreported gaffes by the incumbent president include referring to a Navy corpsman as “corpse man,” talking about visiting “57” states, claiming that Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., were in the Gulf of Mexico, noting in a Memorial Day speech that some “fallen heroes” were in the audience, and making the observation that “the odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately.”

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