Michelle Obama fires back at book’s allegations
A new book claims Michelle Obama's strong opinions have led to conflicts with presidential advisers. Obama dismisses the claims about her.
YURI GRIPAS/REUTERS file photoThe Obamas, by New York Times correspondent Jodi Kantor, was released Tuesday. It has drawn a sharp rebuke from the White House and a response from the first lady.
The book says Michelle Obama clashed frequently with former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, especially over the push for health-care reform. It says Emanuel barred her chief of staff from a morning meeting of top staffers and that he found her reluctance to campaign for the 2010 midterm elections “maddening.”
The first lady also drew the ire of former press secretary Robert Gibbs, according to The Obamas. After a French book claimed Obama had told French first lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy that her life in the White House was “hell,” Gibbs went on a mission to find out if the quote was true and produce a denial from the French.
Told that Obama was dissatisfied with his handling of the incident, Gibbs cursed her out to senior adviser Valerie Jarrett at a staff meeting, the book says.
In an interview with CBS News broadcast Wednesday, Obama said she has not read the book and no matter what she does, “there will always be people who don’t like me.”
“I guess it’s just more interesting to imagine this conflicted situation here,” she said. “That’s been an image people have tried to paint of me since the day Barack announced, that I’m some kind of angry black woman.”
Obama said when questions or conflicts arise involving her and the White House staff, her East Wing staff resolves the issue with her husband’s staff in the West Wing.
The book is based on four years of research and interviews with more than 200 people, including 33 current and former White House officials. Neither the president nor the first lady agreed to be interviewed for the book.
The book also recounts instances in which aides tried to downplay public signs of the first couple’s celebrity and privilege.
Kantor tells of a lavish Halloween party at the White House in 2009 that included an Alice in Wonderland-themed State Dining Room, decorated by director Tim Burton and featuring Johnny Depp in character as the Mad Hatter.
“White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans — or their representatives in Congress, who would soon vote on health care — that the event was not discussed publicly and Burton’s and Depp’s contributions went unacknowledged,” Kantor writes.
In a scathing blog post on the White House website on Monday, titled “Gossip in Wonderland,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz called Kantor’s account a mischaracterization of the event.
“This was an event for local schoolchildren from the Washington, D.C., area and for hundreds of military families, and certainly nothing that the White House was ashamed of,” he wrote.
Schultz called the book “an overdramatization of old news” and noted that Kantor last interviewed the Obamas in 2009 for a magazine piece.
“The emotions, thoughts and private moments described in the book, though often seemingly ascribed to the President and First Lady, reflect little more than the author’s own thoughts,” he wrote.
On Monday, Kantor defended her work on NBC’s Today, saying the White House hasn’t disputed any of the facts in the book.
“I’m one of the only people to get access to the East Wing and the first lady’s staff there,” she said. “What I found is that aides and friends were able to tell stories that the Obamas don’t talk about.”
With files from Star wire services
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