Michelle Obama on Barack Being Called “Fine,” Raising Their Daughters & Watching Trash TV

first kiss tonight is a former FLOTUS and a phenomenally successful author from the south side of Chicago this is her newest number one bestseller the light we carry overcoming and uncertain times please welcome Michelle Obama [Applause] [Music] welcome how are you I'm great how are you I'm doing great I love you you got the flowers that a White Lotus Flower you have there do you watch that show uh yeah I do I do but I haven't watched the finale I won't say anything I won't say anything at all I hate to jump right into it but I am going to jump right now okay because in the book speak your husband Barack Obama the former president yeah he says that you watch too much lowbrow TV he thinks yeah yeah I think he watches too much Sports Center so I think we're even there I keep telling them it's the same thing Real Housewives and the NBA do you watch The Real Housewives is that a series you do which is the best city you know they all have their specialness but you know Atlanta gets me going um Beverly Hills they're a little wacky and does he wander in the living room and go what's going on yeah he does he's like uh what is he doesn't understand what's the last thing you watch together the last thing we watch together uh it was probably Sports golf is always on I know you will watch golf with them well it's it's um it's it's background Ambiance I see yeah it is he'll sit there and watch the watch God it's usually on silent and he's doing something else it's his background it's to his uh golf is like HGTV to me I see you know it's just you just love the sound of people finding nice homes and you know looking at tray ceilings and all that it's just it's soothing it blocks out all the the worries of the day I get it after um eight years I'm sure very very busy days and nights in the White House yeah do you guys ever find yourself just sitting in the your house your home just looking at each other sometimes which we love you love boring times yeah sure neat after eight years in the White House you want desperately to have we celebrate the boring times we look at each other and go what are you doing nothing we're like yes you personally decorate the house for Christmas um I am big into Christmas and I like lots of Christmas decorations we usually spend Christmas in Hawaii that's been our tradition right and so because we're headed there the trees are being put up but I'm looking at everything going one more this one more there one more wreath I love Christmas I love poinsettias everywhere so yes lots of you go to the Home Depot and get like a flat of them or uh no I can't I can't say I can't do that kind of thing in a while when you when you go to Hawaii yeah which you like going to Hawaii uh duh yeah yeah have you met anyone that doesn't like into a white no yes people love going to Hawaii and yeah you're fortunate that's why I married Barack he was from Hawaii I was like yeah you're kind of cute oh look Beer's a little big and you're from where I think I love you you uh right about the first time you went to it was a Christmas trip right yeah yeah it was the after the first summer where we officially started dating and he wanted me to come home and meet his family and I was like oh man I was a second year associate and at a law firm uh in Chicago winners in Chicago are deadly dreary so the thought of leaving my family who I love and going to spend Christmas with the love of my life in Hawaii I was like sign me up but I had never been to Hawaii so I had an image of what it would be and the only image I had though was of The Brady Bunch visit yes you know I mean it's generational but that I knew not to pick up an ancient Tiki Island you know but that was the vision that I had lays on the beach and Waikiki and some hula dancing and so that's right by the way that's not necessarily wrong is it unless you are visiting somebody who grew up there ah and then it's just going home which I didn't I I realized that later so I'm thinking now we've got to have my ties and long walks on the beach and we drive in from the airport on the highway we go into the city I don't see a beach anywhere I don't see Greg Brady in a you know I see nothing that I was expecting we drive up to tooting gramps's apartment building which is just like my grandparents apartment building I was like well this isn't sexy we go up to the 10th floor and we go into their a little apartment and it's really sweet lovely tooting Gramps love them to death they reminded me of my grandparents their apartment looks like a regular apartment no you know no Hawaii anywhere in sight and we did what you do when you visit grandparents 60 Minutes is on you know Gramps made tuna with sweet pickles and we had sandwiches on TV trays that was the first day and I was like okay that's cute you know he's got a great family just like mine and we go and stay and come back second day we do that again Third Day More jigsaw puzzles 60 minutes and I'm like dude where's where's the romantic stuff yeah you know but I tell the story because it's in the chapter called partnering well that what I saw at that young age I thought romance and love was my ties and sunsets on the beach but Barack was showing me that family was important that he showed up for his family and he continued to show up for our family in the same way so for all the yeah and now when you go to Hawaii are you are you staying you're going to the family's house or is that not even possibility his grandparents sure yeah no we have it's a tradition we have about five or six family friends who've been going to Hawaii every Christmas do any of barack's old Stoner friends across the neighborhood come by yes that's the crew but they're no longer nobody's stoning anymore everybody's responsible they all have kids yeah yeah not that I'm gonna admit here on National TVs anyway um will you buy your gifts in advance and then we buy the ship when the kids were little we used to open we used to have two Christmases because Santa was coming and Santa still had to come to the house at the tree that we had so we said Santa's gifts are there and then we brought fewer things to Hawaii but there was a Santa that came to Hawaii too what we do for our kids too yeah did you ever like I know obviously not when you're in the white house but before that did you ever take the kids to the mall to take a picture on Santa's lap we I am a Christmas mother we did it all which mall would you go to uh where would we go it would change up um we we usually took them to Ala Moana in Hawaii okay which is it's a different Santa you know yeah it's like a it's a beach Santa it's a beach Santa more sand than Santa not as chubby um you know the girls are in their shorts in their little that's where their Christmas pictures are in Hawaii because we were going there we've been going there every Christmas except for the Iowa caucuses since they were born we spent the Iowa caucuses caucusing yeah so we weren't in Hawaii but that's what they know Christmas to be so yeah we would go to Ala Moana they had a Santa in the center of the mall and we would stand in line and the kids would see Santa did you ever have the Elf on the Shelf at the White House no that wasn't a thing okay when art they had sort of outgrown all of that but they they outdo that sooner than I would have is your husband hard to shop for he doesn't care about gifts you know so you don't get him any sometimes we aren't really big gift givers because you know like if I get them something it'll be a golf related thing because that's what he does he ever run short of wrapping paper does he ever wrap the gifts in top secret documents he borrowed from the White House we don't have it you don't have any it's good I think and if we had I guarantee you my husband would be in somebody's jail by now this is um when you come back I want to ask you about the book I want to show you something about you haven't seen and I can't believe you haven't seen it because we've all seen it uh well you'll see it okay Michelle Obama is with us is it our book I have to admit that sometimes going out on the campaign Trail feels a little harder than it's Houston not just because I'm older and grayer [Applause] I don't know if y'all heard that well I'm sorry what'd you say [Applause] said I was still fine [Applause] I'm not I'm not going to tell Michelle you said that although Michelle does a group you know you know I hadn't seen that I love that you hadn't seen that but you do know I heard about it yeah you heard about it came home that's the first thing he said we gotta go somebody said I was fine I was like oh really that's so sweet you don't share stories like that with him though do you uh no no of course not um she doesn't need to know all my business yeah that's right this uh book it would it be correct to call it uh like a self-help book in some way yeah it's so it's a little different than that it's not like a how-to but you know as I travel across the country meet with kids and folks leaders there they want to ask me how do you get through stuff people ask you for advice all the time all kinds of things dealing with fear feeling invisible how you find your voice I mean they're just um you know people are trying to figure out how to get through life and not everybody has a mentor not people don't always have parents if they feel like they get the kind of advice from so what this book is is just my offering of the tools that I've developed over the course of my 58 years that helped me you know it's not intended to be a this is how it works and these are the three steps to feeling seen um it's still grounded in Story the stories of my life the things that still make me afraid and vulnerable and I wanted to be a conversation all have tools one of the tools is martinis it seems like based on the book that's the chapter that didn't make it but martinis can be a useful tool they can be useful yeah I have to say I think that for a lot of people probably for me like you know like when you talk about your glow point as a parent maybe maybe it was just one of the low points you have many low points last night my son told me that he wanted a different set of parents because we wouldn't let him have his iPad but um it's like and get rid of you you're out but it makes you feel better to know because we just imagine that you've got everything figured out well I share one of the stories I mean there's a whole chapter called meet my mom because my mom is an amazing force in my life and so much of my parents wisdom is our make up the tools that I use and she of course wouldn't write a book because my mom says who cares what I have to think you know what I would say and I was like no Mom A lot of people would you tried to get your mom to write I tried all right so this is the closest I could could get was sort of put putting her voice in but in that chapter I talk about one of the her um sort of sayings as parent the child you've got you know which as parents if you have more than one kid you have a one kid you think you know what you're doing and then you try to apply the same thing to the second kid and it's like I I am not a good parent right um and so I tell the story of this was during one of the campaigns where Brock had been away from home the kids were supposed to be going to bed they weren't listening I lost my cool I go upstairs and I'm like so you don't want to listen to me well I guess I I just quit I give up you don't need a parent you know um I will just sit I will hand you your lives they're like seven and you know yeah right they're like eight and four you know so here are the two different kids Malia the oldest who is compassionate and you know pleaser she says oh Mommy no no that would be horrible and she rushes and she goes and brushes her teeth and I'm going whoa that was a good play Sasha who's like three has her blankie in her arm she turns and says great and she marches upstairs to go watch TV and I said if you don't get your little butt back down here they are still those kids I mean Sasha at three isn't that weird she could handle her life it was almost like she was saying finally this lady is gonna get out of my hair and let me run this thing like I know I need to run it your mom said something great that you recount in the book something to the effect of my job as a parent is to is to be put out of business how exactly did she put it you know she wanted to make herself Obsolete and and which is contrary to how this generation of helicopter parenting works you know where we are like wiping their noses and you know bringing snacks and scheduling play dates and making sure that they our kids don't experience any hurt or any anxiety we're waking them up until they're 25. um my mother's theory was just the opposite she's like yeah I think my parents felt like they couldn't give us wealth they couldn't they they didn't get a college education we weren't going to get some in inheritance so she had to give us competence and give it to us early so she gave us alarm clocks in kindergarten the minute we were going to school she's like this is how you use it it's your education you said it you get up you you know you work through your your schedule in the morning my mom was up but she was like you've got to be responsible this is your education then she sent me to walk to school by myself at five um but I tell that story because it's also it also helped me get um accustomed to pushing through fears and hesitation earlier when your parents are telling you I think you are capable of doing this you know it made me feel competent and so what one of the things that I say for so many of us who are struggling with fear is that it's a tricky emotion because it can keep you safe but it can keep you stuck if you don't learn how to decode it if you don't learn to understand what's the fear that's going to keep you safe and what's the fear that you need to push through to get to growth and learning my parents made us practice are confronting our fears early in life unbelievable and did they learn that from their parents I think they learned it in the opposite way my grandparents both of my paternal grandparents were stuck by their fear you know being black men in their era moving to the north thinking that they would have expectations of a better life both of them very smart but limited by the racism and the you know absence of opportunity that anger that bitterness kind of kept them fearful and locked in so their lives were smaller than they needed to be and my parents didn't want that for us they knew that fear could make your world small and I tell that story throughout the book tour and in the book because fear can do that yeah that's why people use it to manipulate us to keep us afraid of each other I can't imagine anyone would ever do anything like that yeah but my you know plea to people is you can always make your world a little bit bigger and there's always growth and opportunity on the other side of that good fear so we can't be we can't let people manipulate us into living small lives and being afraid of each other we should be very suspicious of that kind of that is great advice um I know you have to get going but I have I have a little Christmas present for you oh wait wait I've got a gift for you too I'm so glad you I almost forgot Jimmy I this is uh this wonderful homemade jam oh no I'm did you make this no no I didn't but you know I just our traditions we try to do things that are personal small I just don't I you know I think the big materialistic stuff it just kind of ruins the spirit of Christmas oh so that I hope you appreciate this uh delicious homemade uh Jam that I brought for you and what's the matter well I oh well I am I got you a little something um also it's it's also homemade um this is I hope uh I hope you like it [Applause] this is um what is this this is Biggie and this is Tupac they're ponies ponies Jimmy I know I went a little crazy but I wanna I don't know why you have a lot of stuff I figured why not am I gonna get these to Hawaii I think it's they're really good swimmers actually well at least one each for the girls yeah that's right one each for the girls they pass them along thank you so much for being here and also I like to tell our audience tonight that Mrs Obama has a copy of her book The Light we carry for each and every one of you thank you so much for being here Merry Christmas we'll be right back with Mark Maron [Applause]

Channel: Jimmy Kimmel Live

Views: 2,662,262

Keywords: jimmy, jimmy kimmel, jimmy kimmel live, late night, talk show, funny, comedic, comedy, clip, comedian, mean tweets, Interview, Hollywood, Los Angeles, West Coast, Celebrity, Frist Lady, Obamas, Michelle Obama, Author, The Light We Carry, New Book, TV, Favorite Shows, Holiday Decorations, Hawaii, Best Seller, Real House Wives, Christmas, Chicago, Brady Bunch, Grandparents, Santa, Mall Santa, Elf on the Shelf, Gift Giving, Golfing, Parenting

Id: DderdnKnjTE

Length: 19min 43sec (1183 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 12 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/Knock_turnal]

Imagining Barack and his friends, “going on walks,” makes me laugh because it’s something I used to do when I would visit home. Love my stoner friends

[u/snarkyturtle]

100% that "romantic" side of Hawaii is what everyone thinks would happen if they moved there, then they realize it's just being at home then going to work then going home again and no one actually has time to do the stereotypical Hawaiian things.

[u/younginvestor23]

Obama’s stoner friends lol

[u/Rnr2000]

Michelle Obama is so intelligent and gracious.

[u/Ken808]

It blows my mind how we went from these two to Trump so quickly.

[u/ThirteenSeas]

She's just fantastic. So smart, charming, beautiful, funny, cool. She checks every box.

[u/StTaint]

You guys didn't find the Premium-Bought Slavic Bride personable?

[u/pallets1276]

The Obamas are a great family and I also think Michelle is a queen-BUT GODDAMN I HATED their car service thing jamming up Kailua and the Pali. 😭

[u/mxg67]

Appreciate her pronunciation of Hawaii.