--- title: State of the Union 2015: Trolling Republicans description: President Obama couldn't resist a quick off-book jab at the Republicans cheering on his exit from office canonical: https://time.com/3675829/state-union-obama-troll/ author: Tessa Berenson article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-01-21T03:42:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T03:44:11.795Z article:section: Politics og:title: Here's Where Obama Went Off-Script to Troll Republicans og:description: It came at the end. og:url: https://time.com/3675829/state-union-obama-troll/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ebf6cc1dc1e7152/69877aed35ba6f09bfc069dd/2015-01-21t021624z_1190695064_tb3eb1l0.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3100 og:image:height: 1744 og:image:alt: U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House John Boehner watch as U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 20, 2015. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Here's Where Obama Went Off-Script to Troll Republicans twitter:description: It came at the end. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ebf6cc1dc1e7152/69877aed35ba6f09bfc069dd/2015-01-21t021624z_1190695064_tb3eb1l0.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Here's Where Obama Went Off-Script to Troll Republicans > Sponsored content. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Jan 21, 2015 3:42 AM UTC  President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 20, 2015. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 20, 2015. Larry Downing—Reuters  by [Tessa Berenson](https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/)  ## Tessa Berenson Jan 21, 2015 3:42 AM UTC The State of the Union is carefully scripted, prepared and tweaked for months in advance to make sure the President uses the exact right words for every topic. But tonight, President Obama couldn’t resist a quick off-book jab at the Republicans cheering on his exit from office. “I have no more campaigns to run,” Obama says at one point, which prompted laughs and applause from the Republican lawmakers in the audience. Breaking into a sly smile, Obama then added, “I know because I won both of them.” His unscripted joke elicited some of the loudest cheers of the evening and was the “most social moment” of the speech, according to statistics compiled by Facebook. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3675829/state-union-obama-troll/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3675829/state-union-obama-troll/"},"headline":"Here's Where Obama Went Off-Script to Troll Republicans","datePublished":"2015-01-21T03:42:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T03:44:11.795Z","description":"President Obama couldn't resist a quick off-book jab at the Republicans cheering on his exit from office","url":"https://time.com/3675829/state-union-obama-troll/","keywords":["State of the Union 2015","republicans","Obama","state of the union"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ebf6cc1dc1e7152/69877aed35ba6f09bfc069dd/2015-01-21t021624z_1190695064_tb3eb1l0.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Tessa Berenson","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/tessa-berenson/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1ebf6cc1dc1e7152/69877aed35ba6f09bfc069dd/2015-01-21t021624z_1190695064_tb3eb1l0.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House John Boehner watch as U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 20, 2015.","caption":"U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House John Boehner watch as U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington on Jan. 20, 2015.","creditText":"Larry Downing—Reuters","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/state-of-the-union-2015/","name":"State of the Union 2015"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3675829/state-union-obama-troll/","name":"Here's Where Obama Went Off-Script to Troll Republicans"}}]}] ```