There Were Tears When Obamas Left White House

First lady had to wrap up daughters' sleepover
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 7, 2019 10:55 AM CDT
Michelle Obama Describes Emotional White House Exit
Michelle Obama, left, speaks as Gayle King on Saturday in New Orleans.   (Photo by Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

Leaving the White House in January 2017 wasn't just about turning over the presidency, Michelle Obama says. "I was moving my children out of the only house they had really grown up in," she told the Essence Festival in New Orleans on Saturday night, per Fox News. “I think that gets lost on people." Her daughters, Malia and Sasha, had friends over for a sleepover on their last night in the White House. They were slow to get up on Inauguration Day, Obama said. "They're all crying and they have their teddy bears and they're moving slow and I'm like, 'You've got to get up and get out of this house,'" she said. "And I don't know where these kids are going, but they had to get up and out of that house. So you've got tears and I'm pushing people out a freight elevator and my kids are crying."

Then the Obamas had to welcome the Trumps to the White House. "I didn't want to go out and greet them with tears in my eyes because people would think I was crying for other reasons," she said in an onstage interview. Once the day's events were over, she said, it was different. After eight years of watching her husband "get raked over the coals," she said, "It was a lot emotionally that when I got on that plane, it was a release." Democratic presidential candidates appeared at the event, but no hints about an endorsement were forthcoming. "Barack and I are going to support whoever wins the primary, so ... our primary focus is letting the primary process play out," Obama said, per ABC. (More Michelle Obama stories.)

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