User blog comment:KressKross/The President jokes.../@comment-3146930-20140725034804

It really depends on how you see it. In our world, those quotes are so recognizable that almost anyone would know where they came from instantly. In the RWBY world, they ay not have had a Richard Nixon or Abe Lincoln, but there could have been someone like them that had similar speeches in their world. For us though, we know the speeches so it is kind of funny to have Ruby say them.

However this isn't the first time something like this has happened. One of the versions of I Burn contains references to the Human Torch and I think Ghost Rider, so unless RWBY has those same comic book characters (Mercury does like comics), it wouldn't make sense to have them mentioned.