Rob Lowe gives White House reporters a ‘West Wing’ flashback

It’s been seven years since the end of President Jed Bartlet’s second term on the NBC drama, “The West Wing,” but the memory of the series is still fresh enough that when Rob Lowe unexpectedly stepped into the real White House briefing room, the assembled reporters couldn’t help but geek out.

Lowe played White House deputy communications director Sam Seaborn on the first four seasons of the series, which ran from 1999 to 2004.

Though the real-life journalists have been raging against the real-life White House Press Secretary Jay Carney lately after the news of the Justice Department’s surveillance of the Associated Press and Fox News, the attitude toward the actor was warm.

Fox News reporter Ed Henry even tweeted a picture of Lowe in full-Sam Seaborn mode. (Or perhaps it’s semi-C.J. Cregg mode, since she was the Bartlett press secretary).

Lowe was visiting the White House to meet with National Economic Council director and assistant to the president for economic policy Gene Sperling, who was also a writer and consultant on “The West Wing.”

While in Washington, Lowe and his son, Matthew, posed with House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), whom the younger Lowe served as an intern in 2011.

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