President Barack Obama taped his sixth appearance on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" on Tuesday, during which he discussed the NSA, Edward Snowden, the Sochi Winter Olympics and Hillary Clinton. He also made his first public statement regarding recent embassy closings all over the Middle East.
"The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately," Obama said of terror fears, adding that Americans should act "prudently" while traveling.
“We don’t have a domestic spying program,” Obama said of Edward Snowden's leaks about the NSA's surveillance programs. “What we do have is some mechanisms that can track a phone number or an email address that is connected to a terrorist attack...That information is useful."
The president also discussed the nation's increasingly strained relationship with Russia, in light of decision to grant asylum to Snowden, its recent crackdown on LGBT citizens and calls for the United States to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics.
"There are times when they slip back into Cold War thinking and Cold War mentality,” he said of the Kremlin. “What I continually say to them and to President Putin, that’s the past."
Leno also asked whether Hillary Clinton dined at the White House last week to "measure the drapes."
"Keep in mind she's been there," Obama said of the former first lady. "She doesn't have to measure them."
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Tuesday that the president's decision to appear on the "Tonight Show" was motivated by his interest in reaching voters who are "not necessarily readers of newspapers or wire services or necessarily the viewers of cable or broadcast news shows."
"Some of his most substantive interviews have appeared in non-traditional settings so you never know what you might get," Carney added.
