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What We Want Obama & Jimmy To Talk About

by Becca Stanek

President Obama will be in your living room on Thursday evening — kinda. Obama is scheduled to appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! Thursday, March 12 at 11:35 p.m. EST, marking the second time he’s sat down with the ABC late-night show host and the first time he’s returned since he was elected president all the way back in 2008. The appearance was announced Tuesday.

Back in 2008, when Obama first appeared on the show via satellite, the then-Illinois senator and Kimmel joked about everything from Obama’s plans to replace the White House’s bowling alley with a basketball court and his favorite basketball team to his family’s plans for Father’s Day. The two crossed paths again in 2012 when Kimmel hosted the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

Years later and halfway into Obama’s second term as president, a lot has changed. While Kimmel is bound to keep jokes in the mix, Thursday’s conversation will likely delve into more than just basketball and Sunday plans. We don’t have a crystal ball handy, but we do have a few ideas as to what we’d like Kimmel to ask Obama about. From ISIS to immigration to the GOP’s recent letter to Iran, there’s certainly no shortage of options.

That letter the GOP wrote to Iran

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Obama and the GOP haven’t been getting along so great lately, to say the least. But this week, Senate Republicans did something that White House is saying is “without precedent from the past two centuries,” The Hill reports. On Monday, Republicans took it upon themselves to send a letter to Iran’s leaders urging them to reconsider the deal with the U.S. that’s in the works. Obama probably has a lot of feelings about this.

#Emailgate

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OK, admittedly the saga over Hillary Clinton’s use of a personal email account during her tenure as secretary of state isn’t directly about Obama, but it has been blowing up this week with Hillary's press event on Tuesday at the United Nations. Moreover, this is a big deal for the Democratic Party; their likely frontrunner in the 2016 presidential elections is scrutinized and her transparency and trustworthiness is questioned. And because Obama was definitely one of the people Hillary was emailing from that personal account, he’s implicated in the whole situation.

Those darn student loans

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Obama has frequented late night talk shows and other programs geared toward young adults, such as Zach Galifianakis’ “Between Two Ferns,” as a way to reach a younger demographic. And one of the biggest issues for that younger demographic is the massive amounts of student loans that college graduates are facing in this day and age. Obama has some updates to announce on the topic: On Tuesday, Obama signed a presidential memorandum directed toward federal agencies that will make it easier for students to pay off those loans.

And who knows, maybe we'll finally get an update on that White House basketball court — the joke back in 2008 that's now a reality.

Images: Getty Images