Obama’s YouTube Star Turn

President Obama was a YouTube star twice over the last week.

President ObamaYouTube President Obama at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner on April 30.

His late-night address to the nation announcing that Osama bin Laden had been killed on May 1 was watched nearly 5.4 million times in the week that followed. Through Sunday, the nine-minute video had racked up twice as many views as any of the other 1,900 videos on the official White House channel on YouTube.

Presumably, some people who went to bed before Mr. Obama’s announcement at 11:35 p.m. Eastern time wanted to watch it in full when they woke up the next day.

But a different speech — the one Mr. Obama delivered at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner a day before the Bin Laden announcement — garnered even more online viewers. That 19-minute video, posted by C-Span, had been viewed nearly 7.2 million times through Sunday, making it the single most popular speech by the president on YouTube.

Some people doubtless wanted to hear how Mr. Obama had skewered Donald Trump, who happened to be sitting in the same room. Mr. Obama’s punch lines took on more significance when it became evident that he had delivered them while the assault on Bin Laden was being prepared.

Mr. Obama’s previously most popular YouTube clip involved his March 2008 campaign speech about race, “A More Perfect Union,” which has been watched about 6.8 million times.

But it appears viewers had much more to say about the Bin Laden announcement, which has generated more than 130,000 comments, than Mr. Obama’s comedic dinner speech, which has yielded about 35,000.