President Obama has cleared the air surrounding allegations that he gave approval to Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s recent trip to Cuba, saying he “wasn’t familiar that they were taking the trip.”
The President’s comments came during the second part of a pre-recorded interview, aired Wednesday on NBC‘s ‘TODAY Show.’
“This is not something the White House was involved with,” he told Savannah Guthrie during the interview.
“We’ve got better things to do,” he jabbed.
The President said that to his understanding the Carters visited Cuba through an organization that sets up educational trips to the country. But the trip — which coincided with their fifth wedding anniversary — was later called into question by Florida GOP lawmakers because of a strict U.S. ban on tourism in the dictator-run nation.
Obama and the White House had come under fire for the incident after Jay-Z released a song in which he rapped about getting direct White House clearance for the vaycay. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made it clear that it was just a song and the Treasury Department had cleared the travel.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and rapper Pitbull also joined the fray, with Rubio siding with his fellow Florida GOP-ers and Pitbull supporting Jay-Z and his wife’s anniversary trip.
But now that the POTUS has given his two cents, maybe the President can get back to focusing on the “better things” he has to do — like being the first President to spend $4 trillion in a year.
