Our long national nightmare is over: President Barack Obama will finally make his first appearance on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon. You’d be forgiven for not realizing that hadn’t already happened yet. After all, President Obama stopped the Tonight Show multiple times when Jay Leno was host and previously visited Fallon on Late Night, where they slow jammed the news. But technically Obama hasn’t visited the Tonight Show under Fallon’s tenure, an oversight he’ll rectify this Thursday as he works his way down his “to do before leaving the White House” list. (Next up: Have a sleepover with Joe Biden in the Roosevelt Room.)
Deadline offers a lot of speculation about the timing of Obama’s visit. The President will sit down with Fallon just two days after the penultimate round of presidential primaries, by which point Hillary Clinton is expected to have the Democratic nomination locked down. Deadline suggests Obama will officially endorse Clinton this week and use his Tonight Show appearance to try to appeal to Bernie Sanders supporters on her behalf. Sanders, of course, has promised to contest the nomination all the way to the Democratic National Convention, but Obama could be attempting to publicly put his foot down when it comes to that line of thinking. Then again, who knows, maybe the President just really wanted to play Egg Russian Roulette.
