How President Obama Does Credit Cards

Last Thursday, President Obama visited Austin’s Franklin Barbecue and committed two minor breaches of etiquette.

The first is that he cut the line. Reportedly, he is the first person in history to cut the Franklin Barbecue line, which often requires patrons to wait for up to three hours. If you would like to read angry tweets about Obama’s line-cutting, Eater Austin has collected several, such as:

apparently Obama skipped the line at Franklin’s BBQ today. DICK move, bro!

 — @bens_jk

The second breach of etiquette is that he flashed his JP Morgan Select credit card in front of everybody. Literally held it up for all to see, right before paying for his own food as well as at least one other patron’s meal.

So now there are images of President Obama’s credit card bouncing around the internet. (I hope he got someone on his staff to request a new credit card number.)

What do we know about Obama’s credit card? As View From the Wing notes, “you cannot apply directly for this card any longer” unless you are a Chase Palladium Card holder.

The Palladium Card is a credit card literally made out of palladium and gold that is designed for extremely high net worth individuals. In 2012, TIME ran an article about the card with the headline “You’re Probably Not Rich Enough For This Credit Card.” How rich do you need to be? More than $25 million dollars rich. In fact, TIME quotes an unnamed Chase source who claims that half of the world’s billionaires are Palladium card holders.

View From The Wing adds — and rightfully so — that we do not have proof that President Obama holds the Chase Palladium Card that would give him access to the JP Morgan Select card. He could have applied for the JP Morgan Select card on his own while it was still available to consumers. Or he could have a palladium and gold credit card in his wallet somewhere.

Either way, though, I don’t think anyone is really surprised that President Obama probably has a high net worth — just like we shouldn’t be surprised that being president means you get to skip the line.

Photo: Bravek201

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