President Obama celebrated April Fools' Day on Wednesday by breaking through the fourth wall and speaking to a camera like Frank Underwood, the fictional president in the Netflix drama "House of Cards" played by Kevin Spacey.

"Hello everybody. This is not Frank Underwood," Obama said, dropping his voice to apparently imitate the Southern drawl of Spacey's character, who hails from South Carolina.

"This is Barack Obama. Happy April Fools' Day. Frank learned it from me," Obama added in the weekly Web video of behind-the-scenes shots at the White House released on Thursday.

Obama is known to be a fan of the Washington-set show, which follows Spacey's character as he rises from a senior lawmaker to become vice president and eventually commander in chief. In 2013, Obama joked he wished things in Washington operated as "ruthlessly efficient" as they do in the show.

Other politicians celebrated April Fools' Day this year with fake legislation and backhanded compliments.



"We consider West Wing Week a historical document. In fact, all the footage we take and post in high-definition is public domain. That means it belongs to you. What doesn’t make the cut is placed in the National Archive and will one day be available for viewing by historians, and whoever else would like to comb through the thousands of hours of footage we have logged."

There’s also a bunch of bloopers and behind-the-scenes shots of the president starting at around the 5-minute mark, including a clip of him thanking Zach Galifianakis for his “Between Two Ferns” episode.

- Manohar