Former President Barack Obama has opened up about some of the “somewhat inappropriate” attention he received from women while commander in chief and also what kept him on a “straight and narrow path” throughout it.
In an interview released Tuesday on “The Pivot Podcast,” Obama, 63, acknowledged his stardom but insisted that he “was not tripping” from his admirers, to the amusement of the podcast’s co-hosts, former NFL players Channing Crowder, Ryan Clark and Fred Taylor.
“When I got drafted in the NFL, I got a little cuter,” Crowder, a former Miami Dolphins linebacker, said while opening up the discussion by sharing his own experience.
“Do women be hollering at you and stuff, like on the fact that, because you’re a good-looking dude, but now you’re ‘President Good Looking Dude,’” he asked to laughter.
“First of all, I don’t know if Michelle’s going to be watching this,” Obama joked about his wife, former first lady Michelle Obama. He then acknowledged his experiences, which he figured hit him differently because of his age at the time.
“The truth is, you guys as NFL players and athletes generally … y’all get famous young, at a time when the attention that you’re talking about may be flattering, fun, what have you,” he said. “By the time people really knew who I was, I was 43 years old. I was married, had two kids, had gone grocery shopping, had washed my car. I was a regular guy in that sense.”
Obama married Michelle in 1992, and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, were 10 and 7 when they moved into the White House following his sweeping 2008 victory. He was 47 at the time, making him one of the nation’s youngest presidents as well as the first Black president.
“That kind of attention, by the time I got it, I was not tripping on it. There are times where women have acted in somewhat inappropriate ways. There are pictures on the internet of women grabbing my butt, and I was president at the time,” he said.
The Secret Service likely didn’t intervene because they were “like old ladies and stuff, so they’re not going to wrestle them down on the ground,” he added.
Regardless, he credited his family for keeping him grounded amid any such distractions.
“My wife is such an extraordinary woman, such an amazing partner, that you just try to stay focused, stay on the straight and narrow. And also, look, kids change your life. The idea of disappointing your kids is something that, I ain’t going there.”
Obama has been hitting the campaign trail in recent weeks ahead of next week’s presidential election, with the former president stumping for Vice President Kamala Harris in her tight race against his White House successor, Donald Trump.
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“Things can get worse or they can get better. I think right now we’ve got a really stark choice, and I think Kamala Harris will be an excellent president, and I think Donald Trump has already proved he was not a very good president. And that should be enough,” he said on the podcast, while pointing to Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and his “well-documented” unequal and disparaging treatment of minorities as examples of his failed leadership.
“This is somebody who has a history of looking down and disparaging people who don’t look like him,” he said of Trump. “How is he going to represent me if he does not think that I am worthy of the same kind of representation as his kids? And from there you look at specific issues.”
