Has President Obama finally found an issue that could unite both Democrats and Republicans in Washington? Obama was wrapping up an interview with CNBC tonight when he was asked about hip-hop star Kanye West’s bizarre appearance at Sunday’s MTV Video Music Awards. According to an ABC reporter who later posted the comment on Twitter, Obama called Kanye a "jackass."

Now, in case you’ve been in a cave for the past 36 hours, here’s what happened: Kanye West dashed on stage during the show and ripped the microphone away from teen country starlet Taylor Swift as she was accepting an award for "Best Female Video." “Yo, Taylor, I’m really happy for you. I’ll let you finish, but Beyonce has one of the best videos of all time,” West declared. “One of the best videos of ALL TIME!!” Swift, who is perhaps most famous for being dumped by a Jonas brother, just stood there, looking dazed. Needless to say, the clip was candy to the cable TV nets, which aired it hundreds of times on Monday. It was also the talk of the Internet─where an incredibly humorous mash-up video, posted above, made the rounds. In it, it was made to look like it was West who interrupted Obama’s speech last week to Congress, not Rep. Joe (“You LIE!!”) Wilson. (Your Gaggler’s favorite moment: the almost hand-clap from Lindsey Graham, who we could actually envision being a fan of Beyonce.)

Props to Obama for actually acknowledging he knew something about all this Kanye drama—-except we weren’t actually supposed to know this. Obama’s “jackass” comment was delivered during an off-the-record chat with a CNBC reporter, but feeds of these interviews are usually shared with other reporters at the White House. And ABC’s Terry Moran quickly posted the remark on Twitter. “Now THAT’s presidential,” Moran opined. After learning the prez’s comments were supposed to be on background, Moran quickly deleted his Tweet, but it was too late, as his message was already making the rounds. ABC quickly issued a statement apologizing for the gaffe. “In the process of reporting on remarks by President Obama that were made during a CNBC interview, ABC News employees prematurely tweeted a portion of those remarks that turned out to be from an off-the-record portion of the interview,” ABC said. “That was wrong. We apologize to the White House and CNBC and are taking steps to ensure that it will not happen again.”

This is unfortunate—and we’re not just talking about the fact that an off-the-record comment was leaked publicly. In a White House that is so very careful about staying on message, Obama’s Kanye commentary was perhaps the most filter-free moment we’ve seen in a while, and let's face it, the slip-up was pretty harmless. Why shouldn’t Obama be able to call out Kanye for acting like a jackass? Is there anyone who actually disagrees?