Barack Obama may have stopped short of endorsing Stephen Colbert for president last week, but he did give him something arguably more sacred: full Questionert access.
On Wednesday night’s Late Show, Colbert aired a bonus segment from his recent sit-down with the 44th president at the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, with Obama becoming the first former president to submit to “The Colbert Questionert”—Colbert’s “series of 15 questions economically designed to penetrate the soul of someone.”
“I want to warn you,” Colbert told Obama at the top. “If you answer these questions, you will be fully known.”
“I got nothing to hide,” Obama replied.
From there, Obama gamely worked his way through Colbert’s signature battery of questions, weighing in on everything from the best sandwich and his first concert to the scariest animal, favorite action movie, and what happens after we die.
The segment was taped during the same Chicago visit that produced last week’s longer Late Show interview, in which Colbert joked about people urging him to run for president after his CBS show ends in May. Obama declined to endorse the idea, but allowed that “the bar has changed,” adding that Colbert could “perform significantly better than some folks we have seen.”
This time around, their sit-down was less an interview than a personality test—one Colbert has been refining for years.
Since 2021, Colbert has been using the Questionert to “fully know” some of the biggest names in entertainment, from Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, George Clooney, and Barbra Streisand to roughly 90 others. On Wednesday night, the segment finally got around to a former leader of the free world.
Watch Obama’s complete Colbert Questionert at the top of this post.
