"Would you like to buy a vowel, Mr. President?"
"Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajack didn't actually meet with the leader of the free world, but he did stop by the White House Friday for a "purely social" visit.
NBC staff spotted him strolling down the White House driveway toward the northwest gate exit. Sajak and two friends had just finished lunch with David Lane, the counsel to the White House Chief of Staff.
The group did not reveal what was on the menu, but chances are it contained far less alcohol than Sajak used to imbibe between tapings during the early days of the game show, as he recently revealed to the hosts of an ESPN2 program.
"Wheel of Fortune" used to tape multiple episodes a night, Sajak revealed, so between shows he and co-host Vanna White would hit a local Mexican joint and have a few margaritas.
"Vanna and I would go and have two or three or six and then come and do the last shows and have trouble recognizing the alphabet," he said on the ESPN2 show.
Sajak later backtracked a bit from his comments, telling ABC News Radio he might have embellished the story a little.
“To be honest, and I hate to put an end to this drinking thing because we’ve gotten a lot of mileage out of it, but it was probably a half a dozen times we went across the street and had a margarita," he said. "It is funny that on a little show on a little cable network, we’re doing a fun interview, two guys joking around and making a joke about having margaritas thirty years ago and it turns into, you know, a thing for a day."
When asked by NBC Friday to comment on said "thing," Sajak said, "You want me to confirm that I had a margarita 30 years ago? I can confirm that I did."
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