In an appearance at George Washington University Thursday, Jay Carney said that President Obama’s “toughest” interview during his reelection campaign in 2012 was not conducted by any professional journalist for a legitimate news outlet, but rather by Jon Stewart on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, inadvertently acknowledging just how little the president was held accountable by the mainstream news media.

During the GW event, “A Conversation with Jay Carney,” Carney and the host discussed the Obama administration’s pop culture Obamacare campaign and whether some of their tactics were appropriate. After Carney explained that the Funny or Die “Between Two Ferns” skit was never meant to be a true interview and praised Galifianakis and crew for their expert handling of the situation, he argued that, in fact, Obama’s “most substantive, challenging” interview of 2012 was not with any professional journalist, but with Jon Stewart.

I remember we had some discussion during 2012 about well, is it appropriate for the president, the sitting president and candidate, to give interviews with Jon Stewart and others. And the answer was yes, again because young voters that we were trying to reach are more likely to watch The Daily Show than some other news shows. But also, I think if you look back at 2012 and the series of interviews the sitting president of the United States gave, probably the toughest interview he had was with Jon Stewart. Probably the most substantive, challenging interview Barack Obama had in the election year was with the anchor of The Daily Show.

Stewart's interview of Obama was characterized by an enthusiastic and mostly cheerful exchange, though Stewart did challenge the president on his handling of Libya and his sub-par first debate with Mitt Romney. The latter discussion seems to have served to help the president recover from his broadly panned initial performance in the 2012 presidential debates. Before the interview, the president had already appeared on The Daily Show a half-dozen times.  

H/T Real Clear Politics.