First lady Michelle Obama and President Obama took Hollywood by storm Thursday when both flew into the Los Angeles-area for major TV appearances.
Obama talked about Ferguson, Mo., and read mean tweets on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” while the first lady taped an appearance on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show” to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the first lady’s “Let’s Move” campaign to raise awareness about active, healthy living and combat obesity in the country.
The show on Friday released a clip of Obama and DeGeneres dancing to “Uptown Funk,” the Mark Ronson song featuring Bruno Mars that has gone viral on the Internet, inspiring dance party spoofs.
While the dance-off between the first lady and DeGeneres had its fair share of entertaining moments and positive media coverage, afterward the White House press corps pelted the president’s press secretary with questions about why the first lady and the president had taken separate flights to the area on the same day.
According to a recent Air Force estimate, Air Force One costs $228,288 an hour to fly, making a four- to five-hour flight to Los Angeles roughly $1 million each way.
Asked about the separate flights, White House spokesman Eric Schultz said the first lady hadn’t planned on joining the president on the Phoenix leg of his trip back to Washington.
“I did see the tease for the first lady’s appearance on ‘Ellen.’ It looks great,” Schultz said. “I believe on this occasion the schedules were not in sync in order to travel together.”
He also said he didn’t believe that the first lady and the president saw each other while in the Los Angeles area Thursday.
“I’m not even sure they overlapped,” he said.
