Mark Hamill says he asked President Biden if he could call him 'Joebi-Wan Kenobi'
The "Star Wars" actor was the guest of honor at the White House press briefing on Friday.
More like, "Luke, I am your president."
Star Wars star Mark Hamill dropped in to Friday's White House press briefing, where he opened up about meeting President Joe Biden just moments before.
"I called him 'Mr. President,'" Hamill told the press corps of their introduction. "And he said, 'You can call me Joe.' And I said, 'Can I call you Joebi-Wan Kenobi?' And he liked that."
The president apparently enjoyed it enough to give the Luke Skywalker actor some swag, because Hamill showed up to the briefing wearing aviator glasses, which he said he got from Biden. "I love the merch, love it all," he joked, before turning more reflective.
"I only expected to be there for like five minutes," he said of their meeting. "He showed us all these photographs. He was really amazing to me."
Hamill admitted that he was previously invited to the Carter and Obama White Houses, but he was part of a large group on both of those occasions, and he never had been invited into the Oval Office, so this particular trip "was really extra special."
Kevin Dietsch/Getty
Mark Hamill at the White HouseHis time with the press was short, but Hamill managed to shout out some of Biden's accomplishments that impressed the actor, who admitted that he previously "had no idea just what went into what is on [the president's] plate on a daily basis."
“I was honored to be asked to come to the White House to meet the president, the most legislatively successful president in my lifetime," he said, before name-dropping the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the PACT Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
He added, "I want to say once again how grateful I am. It just shows you how one person can be so influential and so positive in our lives and, again, thank you so much."
It's unclear exactly what prompted Hamill and Biden to meet, but the actor clearly had politics on his mind in the lead-up to the meeting, tweeting messages of support for the president earlier in the week such as, "May The First Not Quench Your Thirst For Biden’s Re-election" and "May The Second Biden Administration Be As Productive and Successful As The 1st."
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