Daily Photo: Obama Jokes Around at G-20
EmailABC News’ Kirit Radia Reports: There was at least one lighter moment as President Obama joined other world leaders for the G20 meeting in London this week to address the worldwide financial crisis.
In the photo below, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi gives a big thumbs-up as he drapes his arms around President Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.
What caught our eye was not only Berlusconi’s big grin, but seeing the American and Russian presidents joking around together. Earlier in the week, the former Cold War adversaries agreed to a continue reducing their nuclear arsenals.
G20 leaders (first row from left to right) include: Saudi King Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz, Chinese President Hu Jintao, Britain’s Prime Minister Gordon Brown, (second row from left to right) Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Thai Prime Minister and chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Abhisit Vejjajiva, U.S. President Barack Obama, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and New Partnership for Africa’s Development Meles Zenawi. World leaders meet Thursday for the G-20 summit aimed at fixing the crisis-wracked global economy.
(FEFERBERG/AFP/Getty Images)
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That’s a great pic!
Posted by: amoreena | April 2, 2009, 12:03 pm 12:03 pm
Unbelievable! Everybody on the photo is wearing a smiling face. Pres. Obama has made magic to people!
Posted by: RS | April 2, 2009, 12:17 pm 12:17 pm
from Cicero -
“A nation can survive its fools
and even the ambitious.
But it cannot survive treason from within.
An enemy at the gates is less formidable,
for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city.
But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely,
his sly whispers rustling through all alleys,
heard in the very halls of government itself.
For the traitor appears no traitor;
he speaks in the accents familiar to his victim,
and he wears their face and their garments
and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.
He rots the soul of a nation;
he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city;
he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist.
A murderer is less to be feared. The traitor is the plague.”
Posted by: gag | April 2, 2009, 12:30 pm 12:30 pm
Gag — You are right. Rush Limbaugh should be brought up on treason!
Posted by: Debbie | April 2, 2009, 12:37 pm 12:37 pm
The picture doesn’t mean a lot, but such small signs of civility do carry weight. (A fact our last president understood, with the occasional shoulder-rubbing disastrous result.)
Posted by: jhw539 | April 2, 2009, 12:38 pm 12:38 pm
Love it!!! This is what great leaders and great leadership can do! Kudos Mr. President!
Posted by: Dee | April 2, 2009, 12:42 pm 12:42 pm
gag, it’s gonna be okay! The plague named GW has gone, so you can come back out INTO the sunshine!
Posted by: Clint | April 2, 2009, 12:45 pm 12:45 pm
President Obama is a man of the time. What a fluent intelligent academic brilliant man. He got it all; This what is killing the GOP. Non of its leaders can speak fluently and clearly like him.
Posted by: john McHenry | April 2, 2009, 12:51 pm 12:51 pm
I love, love, love my President! He is too adorable. Yet, strong and confident at the same time. God bless Our new president and the first family.
Posted by: LaShawn | April 2, 2009, 12:55 pm 12:55 pm
wait, this is not king Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz??
Posted by: mumhammed | April 2, 2009, 1:18 pm 1:18 pm
They are laughing at YOU people. They know their actions are robbing the workers and further enriching the bankers of the world.
I’m sure they are congratulating Obama on his courageous actions to bring his nation into sevitude via his “National Service Acts” and HR1444 pending.
Posted by: Madras | April 2, 2009, 1:19 pm 1:19 pm
Yes We Can! Change We Can Believe In!
And they look like they are having fun
Posted by: fempharoh | April 2, 2009, 1:34 pm 1:34 pm
Interesting… You’ll show this picture, but not the one where OBAMA BOWED TO THE SAUDI KING??? If it were Bush you’d be ALL OVER it like a wet dishrag! But seeing as the Obamessiah is the one who BOWED to the Saudi King I guess you’ll just let it slide, eh? Your bias is pathetic.
Posted by: Anon | April 2, 2009, 4:10 pm 4:10 pm
Obama hasn’t changed anything. Guantanamo prisoners will just be shipped to other offshore jurisdictions. The financial system rescue is the same as Bush/Paulson. Geithner was part of the NY Fed which oversaw the entire problem from the start but did nothing. The Patriot act is still in place and the constitution is still equivalent to the value of toilet paper.
Posted by: Alex | April 2, 2009, 5:51 pm 5:51 pm
Are you people joking. Our “wonderful president” as most of you seem to think is a joke. He is going to put us in so much more debt that he will make it impossible for us to get out of. They are all laughing at him, not with him. Why do you think he is there. He is there asking to borrow money from all these countries. They realize that with all the new spending our Pres is going to be doing over the next 4 years, it will put us in a situation where we have to get on our knees and pucker up to them. You lib’s need to start getting your facts, stop blaming Bush for our problems and get a life.
I seem to remember in the not to distant past many of our Dem Politicians finally revealing that they were on the take and received who knows how many kick backs from the Banks to turn the other cheek.
Posted by: Concerned Citizen | April 2, 2009, 6:47 pm 6:47 pm
@RS,nyc poem.U myt get an award at the ARHFC (anual racist hermits fundamentalists’ convention)@ Anon,Alex,Yoster: u act like Obama never ever ever said he would repair relations with america’s ‘enemies’.one thing you gotta understand is that there are human beings in those countries and havn good relations is the best weapon against terror.obama isnt the messiah;he never said he was!that was a term brought about by republicans in a jealous rage about the way the country and the world sees obama.As for debt,sorry but u dont get to dig a deep hole and at the same tym criticise someone for spending money to fill it up.Bush waged and expensive war and lead a wasteful regime,financially,politically and diplomatically.Now obama’s gotta fix it.What i see here is progress.Kudos to Obama and to Americans for ELECTING(Yeah electing him.He beat ur Leslie Nielsen wannabe by almost 3 states to 1)him.
Posted by: Alex | April 2, 2009, 10:35 pm 10:35 pm
gag: you are exactly right. Traitors like Rush Limbaugh, who want to see the president, and thus the country, fail should be tried for treason.
Posted by: Howard Beale | April 3, 2009, 5:00 am 5:00 am
anon: don’t be an idiot. He bowed because he towers over people. It is a simple gesture of courtesy, nothing more.
Posted by: Howard Beale | April 3, 2009, 5:02 am 5:02 am
By the way, latest news from the NATO meeting is that only the UK offered troops to help in Afghanistan. All the other countries turned their backs on the chosen one. Spineless. The American taxpayer and our military will keep them safe.
Posted by: Obamahehateme | April 4, 2009, 4:18 am 4:18 am
i need someones help i am disabled but yet i dont get disability yet thats crazy they can send all kinds of money to the other countrys but they have people american people that need help right here
Posted by: margaret | April 4, 2009, 10:38 pm 10:38 pm
What a nice picture!!!! Preident Obama made it all the way. He is so smart and fluent. He is one of the great a leader who who is adored by the world. But wait this is not a Saudi’s King, He is tthe Saudi foreign minister.
May God bless America and President.
Posted by: I.A.T.SMITH | April 5, 2009, 4:21 am 4:21 am
I find this very amusing. Obama is a joke.
Posted by: gail alabama | April 5, 2009, 9:01 am 9:01 am
No gail alabama what is a joke is our Sen Shelby .Not only a joke but a ,let’s say southerner ,you know what I am saying, gail alabama.
Posted by: outwithShelby | April 5, 2009, 10:58 am 10:58 am
I’m sure those 600,000 + Americans that lost their jobs last month feel equally uplifted and jovial.
Let them eat cake!
Posted by: RR GOP | April 5, 2009, 4:21 pm 4:21 pm
Obama committed the US to pay for the bulk of the $1.1 TRILLION to the IMF. He’s giving up on missile defense to kiss Russia’s butt. He is bowing subserviently to King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. He is apologizing for America being free and strong.
In return, he got ABSOLUTELY no additional help from the Europeans in Afghanistan. Russia continues to sell more weapons and nuke technology to Iran. China blocked ANY statement of disapproval from the UN over North Korea’s missile launch–which violated their agreements.
Good job selling us out, Slick Barry!
Posted by: Ich Bin Ein Beginner | April 6, 2009, 6:15 am 6:15 am
Obama says, in America there is a failure to appreciate Europe’s leading role in the world. When there was genocide on Europe’s doorstep, in the Balkans, it didn’t lift a finger until America led. When Saddam invaded Kuwait, Europe didn’t lift a finger until America led. It’s because with America spending over half a trillion a year, keeping open the sea lanes in defending the world, Europe is spending pennies on defense. It’s hard to appreciate an entity’s leading role in the world, when it’s been sucking on your teat for sixty years as Europe has! And then Obama calls America arrogant, dismissive and derisive, in order to gain the adoration of the crowds. Obama denigrated America in a way that is disgraceful.
Posted by: carl | April 6, 2009, 11:19 am 11:19 am
As President Barack Obama launches a military effort that promises to dwarf the Bush administration’s Iraqi adventure in scope and intensity, the “progressive” community is rallying around their commander in chief as obediently and reflexively as the neocon-dominated GOP did when we invaded Iraq.
Posted by: NO JOKE | April 8, 2009, 8:47 am 8:47 am
“We will convey,” said Barack Obama to the Turkish Parliament Monday, “our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world — including in my own country.”
Undeniably the Islamic faith has done a great deal to shape the world – a statement that makes no value judgment about exactly how it has shaped the world. It has formed the dominant culture in what is known as the Islamic world for centuries. But what on earth could Obama mean when he says that Islam has also “done so much” to shape his own country?
Obama’s statement was extraordinarily strange. After all, how has the Islamic faith shaped the United States? Were there Muslims along Paul Revere’s ride, or standing next to Patrick Henry when he proclaimed, “Give me liberty or give me death”? Were there Muslims among the framers or signers of the Declaration of Independence, which states that all men – not just Muslims, as Islamic law would have it – are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Were there Muslims among those who drafted the Constitution and vigorously debated its provisions, or among those who enumerated the Bill of Rights, which guarantees – again in contradiction to the tenets of Islamic law – that there should be no established national religion, and that the freedom of speech should not be infringed?
Posted by: 9/11 | April 8, 2009, 9:42 am 9:42 am
You go “9/11″ , remind the sheeple who
elected BO to office, just what kind of a moronic posture this administration has taken in the world. The results will make the World Towers look like a walk in Central Park.
Posted by: Cuzin Mikie | April 9, 2009, 9:59 am 9:59 am
Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.
And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.
He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.
From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.
And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he’ll have to leave his swim buddy behind.) The Austrians said they would take none.
Posted by: Real Men of Foreign Policy Genius | April 10, 2009, 9:36 am 9:36 am
What an interesting article and picture.
Posted by: cahya | April 10, 2009, 1:02 pm 1:02 pm
Was this taken before or after the French Prez called Obama Weak and Meek?
Posted by: Johnny Dollar | April 15, 2009, 2:58 pm 2:58 pm
Nobody’s has seen Omar Al-Bashir on the extreme right? Spoof!
Posted by: lazarus | April 16, 2009, 10:57 am 10:57 am
Thanks for this article – it highlighted some of the link building aspects I thought were important. In as much as quality link is relevant, content is still king.
Posted by: runescape accounts | April 22, 2009, 9:52 pm 9:52 pm
Anon…you never saw the pictures of George W. Bush HOLDING HANDS with the Saudi King??? Perhaps you forgot that Bush’s personal lawyer was the first ambassador to Saudi Arabia, which meant that any communications between Bush and Saudi Arabia were covered not only by Diplomatic Immunity, but by lawyer-client privilege.
Which worries you more, a simple bow ( same as he would do to the President of Japan) or holding hands and having his personal lawyer be the contact?
Posted by: Robert O'Brien | May 17, 2009, 2:44 pm 2:44 pm