Obama Had A 'Star Wars'-Themed Press Conference

President Obama held his end-of-year press conference on Friday and took questions for about an hour, but the White House wasn’t under any illusions; Obama and his team knew full well that the only thing on anybody’s mind was Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which opened this weekend. To capitalize on the unfathomable level of excitement surrounding the new film, Obama held a Star Wars-themed press conference, and it was just wonderful.

In some ways, this wasn’t too unusual. Obama mentioned that the new Star Wars film would be screened at the White House — not surprising, as plenty of films have been shown at the White House before. The president ended the press conference by remarking that he didn’t want to miss the screening; some might call this unbecoming for a president, but the comment fit in quite well with the general attitude Obama has displayed ever since he became a lame duck president.

And yet still, this was undeniably a one-of-a-kind press conference, if for other reason because actual Star Wars characters were present. There’s a pretty good chance that this will never, ever happen again at a White House press conference, so let’s savor every little detail of it.

Obama Hinted At What Was To Come

“Clearly, this is not the most important event that’s taking place at the White House today,” Obama said at the beginning. “There’s a screening of Star Wars for Gold Star families and children coming up, so I’ll try to be relatively succinct.” Gold Star families are an organization of Americans whose relatives were killed in U.S. military operations.

He Left When Star Wars Was About To Start

“OK, everybody, I gotta get to Star Wars,” Obama said. The reporters present kept asking him questions, though, which was silly, because Obama’s clearly not going to miss the beginning of Star Wars to deal with a bunch of journalists.

Then The Real Fun Started

Obama left, and was replaced by White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest... who arrived at the podium flanked by Stormtroopers. The press pool reportedly joked that this now clears up which side of the Force the administration is on.

And That Wasn’t All

There was a special guest waiting around the corner: R2-D2.

It Ended With Sound Effects And A Photo Op

And thus concluded one of the nerdiest press conferences in White House history.