Could Obama bear-hugger pick up previous presidents?
Picking up President Obama in a bear-hug might have looked like a breeze for the pizza joint owner who gave the commander in chief a lift Sunday, but he could have had trouble picking up some of the president’s predecessors — Obama weighs the least among the most recent POTUSes.
According to a White House pool report, Scott Van Duzer, who boosted Obama up in a hug about a foot off the ground during a Florida campaign stop, stands 6-foot-3 and weighs 260 pounds.
{mosads}At his last official physical exam, released by the White House last year, Obama, who is 6-foot-1, weighed 181 pounds.
A 2006 medical exam of former President George W. Bush showed the nearly 6-foot-tall ex-Texas governor was carrying around 196 pounds of weight.
While former President Clinton is looking slim since dropping pounds following his 2004 quadruple bypass surgery, he had a bit more meat on his bones during his 2001 checkup.
The 6-foot-2 Arkansas native tipped the scales at 214 pounds back then — likely making him more difficult to grasp in a bear-hug.
But these days, Van Duzer would probably have no problem raising up Clinton or any of the previous presidents. Clinton, 66, says he lost 24 pounds in two years after he started his new veggie-heavy diet in 2010, and the pizza guru told a pool reporter he can bench-press up to 350 pounds.
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