Michelle Obama takes pride in what she and her husband were able to achieve in the White House — and the lack of indictments they and their staff faced.
The former First Lady held few punches in an “intimate conversation” with her good friend Sarah Jessica Parker at the Brooklyn Barclays Center stop of her Becoming book tour.
“I like to tell the truth,” Obama said in response to Parker’s gushing about the memoir’s honesty. “Go figure,” she quipped with a sly smile.
Parker steered the conversation toward the Obama’s tenure as the First Family and the pressure that came with being the first African Americans to do it.
“Barack and I tried to operate at extreme perfection for eight years. We met the bar. Now that bar’s just swinging,” she joked while alluding to the current administration. “When we were in office, not getting indicted and telling the truth, small things like that…(we) set high standards with morals.”
The Sex and the City star mentioned that she was once “part of this show that filmed in New York,” and reflected on the evolution the city underwent for her after it was no longer the backdrop for the series and simply her home again. Parker was relating her experience to the Obamas’ decision to stay in Washington D.C. at the end of Barack’s presidency.
“It was like a Get Out situation,” Obama deadpanned, “like, don’t look at the tea cup.
“But no one was going to run us out of town,” she said, especially since her younger daughter, Sasha, who was 8-years-old when her dad became President, was a sophomore in high school at the time.
Parker asked Obama about her family’s final hours spent living at the White House, which the Chicago native recalled with tenderness and signature humor.
The Harvard Law grad said that the morning of Donald Trump‘s inauguration was a mad dash in which she was trying to get her daughters’ friends “into a freight elevator” and out of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
“It was like, the Trumps are coming, and all of a sudden there’s a Tiffany’s box in my hand,” she said, instantly summoning images of the many photos taken of her and her exasperated expression that January morning.
“That inauguration was not like ours,” she said to applause. “There was no representation.”
“Yes, and…we miss a more civilized time full of grace and dignity,” Parker followed up. “We feel a bit adrift because it’s what we expect of the office.”
“You have to demand it,” Obama said with conviction. “It can be buried by fear, hate and greed, but that word, ‘hope,’” a permanent reference to her husband’s 2008 Presidential campaign, “it’s not passive.
“We have to be active participants and go out and vote for it. They (Republican voters) wanted it more this time than people expected.”
This article was featured in the InsideHook newsletter. Sign up now.
