During a talk at Hamilton College on Thursday, former President Barack Obama admitted that his marriage to Michelle Obama suffered during his presidency.
There was some speculation about the couple’s marriage after the former president attended Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Donald Trump’s inauguration alone. Rumors even circulated about Barack having an affair with actress Jennifer Aniston, which she has denied.
“I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” the former president told Hamilton College President Steven Tepper, “so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by occasionally doing fun things.”
The audience at the New York college laughed at Obama’s remark, which came in the context of his second presidential memoir. “I am also finishing the second half of my presidential memoirs, which in case any of you feel sorry for yourself, this is like 50 term papers,” he said, before discussing his relationship with his wife.
“I mean, it goes on forever. People ask me, ‘Do you enjoy writing?’ I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ but I do enjoy writing once it’s finished. “I hope to finish that,” he added.
Obama stated that he is splitting his time between writing another book and working at the Obama Foundation, which he founded with the former first lady. The nonprofit organization’s “mission is to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world.”
The former president has previously addressed his marital issues: “Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her,” he said in a 2023 CBS Mornings interview.
Michelle acknowledged it as well, stating that she couldn’t “stand” her husband for ten years. “There were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband,” she said in 2022.
The former president also made headlines at the Hamilton College event, criticizing law firms and universities that have sided with the Trump administration.
“If you are a university, you may have to ask yourself, ‘Are we doing things correctly?'” Have we, in fact, violated our own values, code, or broken the law in some way?” Obama said. “If not, and you’re just intimidated, you should be able to say, ‘Well, that’s why we have such a large endowment.
We’ll stand up for what we believe in, pay our researchers for a while with that endowment, and give up the extra wing or the fancy gymnasium.
On law firms, he expressed similar sentiments.
“The idea that a White House can say to law firms, ‘If you represent parties that we don’t like, we’re going to pull all our business or bar you from representing people effectively.’ … That kind of behavior is contrary to the basic compact we have as Americans,” according to him. “Yeah, if you’re a law firm being threatened, you might have to say, ‘OK, we will lose some business because we’re going to stand for a principle.'”
