There was some speculation about the pair’s marriage after the former president attended Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Donald Trump‘s inauguration solo. Rumors even stooped to Barack having an affair with actress Jennifer Aniston, which she has denied.
“I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” the former president said to Hamilton College President Steven Tepper, “so I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things.”
The audience at the New York college laughed at the remark, which was said in the context of Obama writing 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 right before mentioning his relationship with his wife.
“I mean, it just goes on forever. But people ask me, ‘Do you enjoy writing?’ I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ but I do enjoy having written when it’s finished. I’m hoping to get to the finish line on that,” he added.
Obama said he is splitting his time between writing another book and at the Obama Foundation, which he set up with the former first lady. The foundation’s “mission is to inspire, empower, and connect people to change their world.”
The former president has commented on his marital strife before: “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 an interview on CBS Mornings in 2023.
Michelle acknowledged it as well, noting that she couldn’t “stand” her husband for a decade. “There were 10 years where I couldn’t stand my husband,” she said in 2022.
The former president made other headlines at the Hamilton College talk, blasting law firms and universities that have compromised with the Trump administration.
“If you are a university, you may have to say … ‘Are we, in fact, doing things right? Have we, in fact, violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?’” Obama said. “If not, and you’re just being intimidated, you should be able to say, ‘Well, that’s why we’ve got this big endowment. You know, we’ll stand up for what we believe in, and we’ll pay our researchers for a while out of that endowment, and we’ll give up the extra wing or the fancy gymnasium.’”
TRACKING WHAT DOGE IS DOING ACROSS THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
On law firms, he echoed much of the same sentiment.
“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,” he said. “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.’”
