TMZ Posts Audio of Obama Calling Kanye a 'Jackass.' But How Did It Get the Tape?

You knew it was going to happen: TMZ has obtained and posted the audio of President Obama calling Kanye West a “jackass.” It appears the initially off-the-record slam came during the chitchat preceding an official CNBC interview yesterday. CNBC’s John Harwood asks Obama if his daughters were as upset about as his kids were about West’s interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at the MTV Video Music Awards. “I thought it was really inappropriate,” Obama says. “She’s getting an award. Why are you butting in?” Swift, the president notes, seems like a “perfectly nice person.” When Harwood questions why Kanye did it, Obama says point-blank: “He’s a jackass.” It didn’t take long for Obama to figure out that he said something he maybe shouldn’t have. “Where’s the pool?” Obama jokingly asks, as if to make sure no one heard him. “Come on, guys, cut the president some slack. I’ve got a lot of other stuff on my plate.”

The tape is pretty funny, and as your Gaggler noted earlier, Obama trashing Kanye for being a jackass is not exactly something that will divide the country or get the president in trouble. All of that raises the question: how did TMZ get the tape in the first place? What's interesting about the audio is that Obama's voice is heard very clearly, while Harwood's is not. Perhaps the interviewer did not have his microphone on just yet, but that would be a bit unusual if the tape had been coming from CNBC's live feed. The White House has a stenographer who tapes all of Obama's interviews for the purpose of an internal transcript. Did the White House give the audio to TMZ?