Barack Obama's top spokesman shied away on Monday from confirming UK Prime Minister David Cameron's revelation that the president calls by a nickname – 'bro.' But it's the way he dodged a question about presidential nicknames from CBS White House Correspondent Major Garrett that had reporters laughing. 'To paraphrase a local baseball player here in Washington, D.C., that's a clown question, bro,' Earnest said during the first press conference since Obama and his entourage returned from a lengthy Hawaiian vacation. The reference wasn't lost on a chuckling press corps: Bryce Harper, an outfielder with the Washington Nationals baseball team, created that quip in 2012 to dismiss a post-game question he didn't want to answer.
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British leader is so close to the US president that Obama calls him 'bro,' Cameron told the Mail on Sunday.
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White House spokesman Josh Earnest won't confirm that account, choosing to dismiss the question with a famous Washington sports quip
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'That's a clown question, bro,' he told a CBS reporter, mimicking Washington Nationals outfielder Bryce Harper
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Harper, then 20 years old, coined the phrase in 2012 when a reporter asked if he could drink beer in Canada, where the drinking age is under 21
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Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was the first politician to quote Harper, sidestepping a political question a week later
@placeholder insisted Monday that he was joking, and then provided an official response.