Former first lady Michelle Obama said in a new interview that she’s surprised her daughters had any friends while growing up due to the strict White House security protocol.
“Imagine having Malia and Sasha come to your house for a sleepover. This is the call: It’s like, ‘Hello. OK, we’re going to need your Social Security number, we’re going to need your date of birth,'” Obama told CBS News’s Gayle King at the Essence Festival on Saturday.
“There are going to be men coming to sweep your house, if you have guns and drugs, just tell them yes because they are going to find them anyway. Don’t lie, they’re not going to take them, they just need to know where they are. And, uh, thank you for having Malia and Sasha over. Oh and by the way, there is going to be a man with a gun sitting outside of your door all night. If you let him just come in and use the bathroom, that would be nice,” Obama joked. {mosads}
Malia Obama, who turned 21 last week, was just 10 years old when the family moved to the White House; Sasha was seven.
The former first lady said she and former President Obama tried to keep their daughters down to earth, despite living in the limelight as first family, by reminding them all the amped-up security “isn’t about you.”
“Yep, yep, your dad’s president, that doesn’t have anything to do with you, just take your little butt to school,” Michelle Obama said she’d tell her kids.
As Sasha now prepares to leave for college, Michelle Obama doesn’t seem too distraught at being an empty nester.
“The kids are gone and Barrack’s like, ‘You seem so much less stressed,’ and I was like, ‘Duh,'” she said. “Not only were we parenting teenagers, we were parenting teenagers where every Saturday night you had to worry if your kid was going to wind up on Page Six and now — and the other end of it it’s like ‘Oh, it’s you again.'”