President Barack Obama racked up a big win this week, and he’s making sure everybody knows all about it.
“I walked down the block to shoot some pool with [Colo.] Governor [John] Hickenlooper at his old bar, the Wynkoop Brewing Company,” the commander in chief told supporters at a July 9 speech in Colorado.
“You should not ask him who won, heh. No, no, really, don’t ask Gov. Hickenlooper who won at pool,” Obama laughed.
Admittedly, even as Obama celebrated his triumph, hundreds of thousands of unskilled migrants are flooding over the Texas border and even more poor people are northwards from Central America.
The Middle East is in flames, the nation’s economy is stalled, wages are flat, Russian tanks are threatening to move on Ukraine, Obama’s polls are heading below 40 percent, and Democrats may lose their Senate majority.
But at a fundraiser shortly after his speech, Obama again boasted of his great victory over the Hickenlooper threat, according to a report from the press pool.
“We walked over to Hickenlooper’s old joint. … Hickenlooper’s there, challenged me to pool. You can ask him how that went,” said Obama.
“I took his lunch money,” added Obama.
Some Democrats might want to ask Obama why he’s talking up a pool-table win amid a cascade of disasters for himself, the nation and the Democratic Party.
“The optics … are that he’s not paying attention to this [border] crisis, Texas Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar said Wednesday.
The best account of the historic win for Team Obama was provided by a White House press pool, late July 8, from the bar owned by Hickenlooper.
“Obama and Hickenlooper headed up to the second floor and made their way to the bar. Both ordered beers — possibly IPAs based on the appearance, but the pool could not hear their order.”
“After chatting with a few folks, the governor and the president walked over to a pool table. They set their beers down on a nearby table and geared up for a game. Obama and Hickenlooper got off to a slow start, pushing the balls around without much success. Obama played solids and Hickenlooper was stripes.”
“You didn’t leave me a thing,” Obama said after a Hickenlooper shot. Obama missed another shot and said, “All right. It helped you more than it helped me.”
Hickenlooper, in a blue button-down shirt and gray pants, joked, “Let’s get the press out of here.”
But soon, Obama built some momentum, sinking a couple shots. Obama took only a couple sips of beer in the presence of the pool, and an appetizer delivered by a waiter sat untouched.
As the press pool started to leave, Obama suddenly got hot, sinking multiple shots and winning the game. “Did you record that?” Obama asked the pool.
“I take a little longer to warm up,” Hickenlooper said.
Obama asked the pool to take note of how many balls Hickenlooper still had on the table. “Five,” he said. “Five.”
With that, the pool was ushered out. At 8:42 p.m., the motorcade was rolling out.
Hickenlooper, whose state and personal career depend heavily on support from Obama, has not chosen to challenge the president’s trash talk, or to deny rumors that he deliberately lost the game to save Obama’s ego for the next round of international negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
