WASHINGTON – The White House is calling foul on Red Sox slugger David Ortiz for taking a shameless selfie with President Obama in what looked like a plug for corporate sponsor Samsung.
“Big Papi” took the cell phone photo in the middle of a televised event while President Obama took time away from running the country to honor the 2013 World Series Champs – just a day after the heavy hitter inked a sponsorship deal with Samsung.
“As the rule the White House objects to attempts to use the president’s likeness for commercial purposes,” said White House press secretary Jay Carney – who is such a devoted Red Sox fan that he sported a team cap at the event this week. “We object in this case,” Carney told reporters Thursday.
Carney dodged questions about whether the White House counsel’s office would put forward an official objection to the team or the company.
Ortiz initially got kudos for taking the photo, and got a friendly response from Obama, who agreeably smiled and posed for the shot.
After Ortiz handed Obama a Red Sox jersey emblazoned with the number 44, Obama asked an array of photographers to make sure they got a good picture. “Do you mind if I take another one, with my own?” Ortiz asked the president. “He wants to do a selfie. It’s the Big Papi selfie,” Obama riffed.
Immediately after he took the picture, someone – later believed to be Ortiz – yelled out “cha-ching,” in the universal synonym for cash.
Even team manager John Farrell was in the dark. “At the time I didn’t know it,” he told Boston radio station WEEI Wednesday. “I read about it this morning that this was maybe a little brought along by Samsung … That didn’t take away from a pretty special day.”
After Ortiz tweeted out the photo on his account, Samsung blasted it to its more than 5 million followers.
Ortiz told the Boston Globe he decided to take the picture on a whim at the last second and it had “nothing to do with deals.”
Samsung confirmed it had a “relationship with David and the Red Sox,” but dodged direct questions from The Post about whether the company put him up to the stunt. The company later told the Globe it didn’t know what images Ortiz would capture.
“We partner with people who have like-minded values and fit with who we are as a brand. When we heard about the visit to the White House, we worked with David and the team on how to share images with fans,” the company said in a statement.