Pushing up on the Nobel Peace Prize, Barack Obama has a new trophy for the mantelpiece: an Emmy Award. His win for Featured Storyteller for his work on the Netflix documentary “Our Great National Parks” makes him the first former president to win an Emmy in a competitive category.
While Obama is the first president to mark that milestone, another commander-in-chief beat him to the Emmy by some 66 years: Dwight D. Eisenhower received a Primetime Emmy Governors Award in 1956 for his “appreciation of television,” the year after he gave the first televised press conference. While live press conferences weren’t the norm until John F. Kennedy’s presidency, the Television Academy apparently welcomed Eisenhower’s efforts to push the emerging medium anyway.
If it’s any consolation to Obama, he made win the Nobel Peace Prize, for which only Eisenhower was nominated. Obama also has two Grammy Awards to his credit, so he remains the only ex-president halfway to an EGOT. And, most importantly, perhaps, the first PENG. (President, winner of Emmy, Nobel and Grammy awards).
To date, former President Donald Trump has two Emmy nominations with no wins.