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The future First Lady at the time was interviewed with her husband while Barack was campaigning to become US President. In the interview Michelle and Barack sat down with their children Malia and Sasha, who were 10 and seven years old at the time. They spoke about family life and what it was like to be the daughters of a presidential candidate.

The former First Lady recalled the interview in her best selling memoir Becoming.

She said: Malia had her hair braided and Sasha wore a red tank dress.

As always, they were disarmingly cute.

The future First Lady joked how Malia was the familys junior professor and earnestly pondered every question.

She added: She said that her dad embarrassed her sometimes when he tried to shake hands with her friends and also that he bothered all of us when he left his campaign luggage blocking the door at home.

Michelle added how Sasha did her best to sit still and stay focused.

The youngest Obama only interrupted the interview once, asking her mother when they were getting ice cream.

The former First Lady wrote: Otherwise, she listened to her sister, interjecting periodically with whatever semi-relevant detail popped into her head.

JUST IN:Michelle Obama shock: Ex-FLOTUS 'could still run for President'

The former First Lady said: We felt like wed made a wrong choice, putting their voices into the public sphere long before they could really understand what any of it meant.

Nothing in the video would hurt Sasha or Malia.

But it was out in the world now.

Barack, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee at the time, told TODAY how they got carried away in the moment.

He said: We were having a birthday party, and everybody was laughing. And suddenly this thing cropped up.

I didnt catch it quickly enough. I was surprised by the attention it received.

The interview was conducted by Maria Menounos, who told MSNC how the Obama's daughters were not planned to be in the interview.

She said: The interview originally was just supposed to be the senator and his wife.

We get there and it was the Fourth of July, it was Malias birthday, the circumstances surrounding that day I think kind of lent themselves to a more comfortable atmosphere for the girls."

Ms Menounos claimed she was convinced it was spontaneous and that it was just kind of organic.

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Michelle Obama heartache: Ex-FLOTUS admits she made the wrong choice for her children - Express.co.uk

Michelle and Barack Obama at the Obama Foundation Summit 2019 in Chicago, IL.

Chicagos South Side Bronzeville neighborhood, a center of African-American life and culture, hosted the 2019 Obama Foundation Summit at the Illinois Institute of Technology on October 29, 2019. The Advancing Women in Product (AWIP) team was invited to cover the Summit as press, and from the perspective of a female empowerment and advocacy NGO.

Kira Alvarez, who is the Press Lead for Advancing Women in Product (AWIP), took time from her busy schedule as a researcher at Freie Universitt Berlin to cover the Summit for AWIP. Kira has taught and published throughout the U.S. and Germany, on topics such as diplomacy, history, and the intersection between science, technology, and society.

The South Side of Chicago was a deliberate choice. This region boasts a visionary past that has witnessed Ida B. Wells, President Obama, and Michelle Obama among others working toward social change. The Summit aptly chose the phrase Places Reveal Our Purpose as the conference theme, and touched on a number of pressing societal issues such as racism, poverty, and gender inequality. It showed that the South Side of Chicago is full of hope, love and energy that can inspire other places throughout the world. The critical role that communities and networks can play in supporting and promoting social advancement and opportunity was a powerful message from the 2019 Obama Foundation Summit.

Women leaders including Michelle Obama and Academy award nominee filmmaker Ava Duvernay spoke about their personal and professional journeys. These women showed that ambition and drive alone are not enough in pursuing a successful and fulfilling career. Support networks are key to achieving broader social change, especially for female advancement. This is in line with what researchers like Herminia Ibarra have remarked on the topic, that sponsors (both within and outside an organization) can help to accelerate careers and create opportunities. For Michelle Obama, support came from her family and a strong belief in self, which helped her overcome the prejudice she experienced growing up. For those who are looking to create their own support networks, search within your current social and professional networks optimizing for those that will generate new opportunities.

An example of community engagement from the Obama Foundation is the Girls Opportunity Alliance (GOA), a program that seeks to empower girls and their respective communities through education. AWIP was invited to the intimate GOA roundtable with Michelle Obama, which featured international educators from countries including Cambodia, Guatemala, and Malawi who tirelessly work on the front lines to improve girls lives. According to Michelle, the lack of investment in female education is an international emergency: What a waste. What a waste for society, what a waste for a family. What a waste for that girls soul to be trapped by her fate and not by her ability.

Michelle Obama with leaders from the Girls Opportunity Alliance (GOA)

The Girls Opportunity Alliance (GOA) empowers young girls in three dimensions: By growing an online network of grassroots leaders, by providing financial support for individual projects through GoFundMe, and by encouraging young people throughout the developed world to join the cause of promoting greater educational opportunities for women. GOA sees its work as not limited to a local or national context and therefore requires a transnational approach. Creating an alliance of young womens opportunities is ultimately about human rights. Investment in a network of girls education programs is key not just for the advancement of individual women, but also for the long-term advancement of societies. Being aware of opportunities outside ones immediate surroundings, especially if those surroundings are limited by lack of resources, can be extremely freeing. According to the Gates Foundation 2019 Goalkeepers report, the lack of access to education and jobs is destructive for everyone. It keeps women disempowered, limits their childrens life chances, and slows down economic growth.

The Summit also featured other Chicago leaders who stressed the creation of strong networks and equality in education. Among them, Obama Foundation Scholars, Aime Eubanks Davis and Dominique Jordan Turner, are founders of organizations that promote education and network creation. Ms. Davis, a 2018 Obama Fellow, is the CEO of Braven, an organization that works with universities and businesses to assist low-income, first-generation university students find employment post-graduation. Ms. Turner, a 2019 Obama Fellow, is the CEO of Chicago Scholars, a seven-year mentorship program that assists underprivileged Chicago youth in the college application process and subsequent employment search. Both Braven and Chicago Scholars are exemplary models of how organizations can provide disadvantaged students greater opportunities in the American educational system.

Many of the students that participate in the Chicago Scholars or Braven program have the talent and ambition to succeed, but lack networks to help them create and sustain a career and might otherwise fall through the cracks. The programs therefore closely mentor underprivileged students by leveraging a large network of support including college counselors, potential employers, and alumni. Ms. Davis stressed, referral networks are important in order to achieve career success. Simply having a college degree and talent is no longer fully sufficient for gainful employment in the American workforce that is the important lesson that these students are learning. Having the right skills through education is the first step but is much more effective when combined with a powerful support network.

We find a similar root cause with the lack of women representation in tech leadership and executive ranks: many women already have their foot in the door and are often highly educated but are often encountered with a glass ceiling. Organizations like Advancing Women in Product, Pink Innov, and the Operator Collective serve to stack the cards in the other direction: by creating opportunities where senior women can take a high-potential, rising leader under their wing. In a similar vein, these organizations are also creating communities and networks that encourage women to stay in the workforce and also introduce them to open leadership roles within the company as well as board seats for other companies.

The 2019 Obama Foundation Summit ultimately demonstrated that social change requires not just hard work, but also the creation and sustainment of networks. Girls Opportunity Alliance, Braven, and Chicago Scholars are important models that utilize networks to help women and minorities achieve their goals. Lets bridge the gap by building strong networks for ourselves and take our destiny into our own hands.

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Lessons From Michelle Obama And The 2019 Obama Foundation Summit: Empowering Communities Through Education - Forbes

Recently, there appeared in our finest newspapers The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal a spate of news stories that set official Washingtons mind at ease. As The Washington Post, put it, The Justice Departments internal watchdog (that would be Inspector General Michael Horowitz) is expected to find in a forthcoming report that political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016. Nonetheless, the report will be criticizing the bureau for systemic failures in its handling of surveillance applications, according to two U.S. officials.

We shall have to wait until Dec. 9 to hear from Horowitz as to what those systemic failures were. Do these early reports on his work forecast a whitewash? It would appear so. But can anyone really take seriously that those systemic failures took place in the absence of bias? Such a claim requires a great deal of contortion. And the spate of stories last week suggests the form that contortion will take: Blame will fall not on Peter We Will Stop Him Strzok the virulent hater of President Trump who orchestrated the spying on the Trump campaign but on a low-level lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith. We are led to believe by these stories that while Clinesmith was biased against Trump Trumps victory had devastated him, he wrote in an email that bias never tainted his work or infected any of his colleagues. Many of whom, incidentally, are on record as sharing his bias. He was, you see, simply sloppy, or so the report is purported to say.

I read these happy, trouble-free news stories very carefully, and one thing struck me.Nowhere in any of the stories did anyone bother to ask the question: What precisely triggered the need for this investigation of the investigators?It did not start in a vacuum. Was it not largely precipitated by the discovery of the FBIs pervasive use of the Hillary-financed Steele dossier, upon which the Strzoks of this world relied for spying on Trump officials, all of whom turned out not to be Russian agents, as the FBI alleged?

Naturally, these stories skirt that issue. If Horowitz skirts that issue, too, his report will not amount to much, and we will have to look to Justice Department prosecutor John Durham for real answers. In April, Attorney General William Barr said, I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal. It has not ceased to be a big deal, even if Horowitz breezes over it.

What real grounds did the Obama administration have for its spying? That has never been satisfactorily explained. Consider the irony here. During the impeachment hearing, we have heard Democrat after Democrat intone gravely that nothing is more abusive than a president seeking to get foreigners to spy on a political rival. Yet is that not exactly what Obama did in letting the John Brennans and Peter Strzoks loose to spy on the Trump campaign with the help of foreign intelligence bodies, such as MI6? If it was wrong for Trump to try to get our ally Ukraine to investigate the Joe and Hunter Biden, as the Democrats assert, how can they possibly justify the Obama administrations use of foreign intelligence bodies to spy on Trump?

Now, what youre going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country, said the president of the coming revelations from Durham. Let us hope he is right. Spygate dwarfs Watergate in seriousness. After all, the Obama administration was not caught in a third-rate burglary but in a high-level scheme to weaponize both domestic and foreign intelligence instruments against a political opponent. For over two years, I have been predicting the Justice Department would find evidence of FBI and CIA agents working together to spy on Trump operatives. The Durham investigation will bear this out. The media, of course, will try to pit Horowitz against Durham. Do not fall for it.

R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. is a syndicated columnist.

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Waiting for shoe to drop on Obamas use of spying - Boston Herald

Robert Hirsch of Miramar Beach takes issue with a previous letter to the editor about President Trump and the great things he has done, and points out President Obama actually deserves credit for those things.

The writer of All credit goes to Trump asked some questions and tried to make some points to which I would like to respond.

First, he tries to make the case that my investments are better since Trump became president. In 2008, right after Obama was elected and the stock market was in the toilet, I figured Obama would pull us out of the Bush recession and now was the time to invest. I was correct and my 2008 investments doubled. In fact, the markets continued rise is a credit to Obama, and, under Trump, the market has slowed and a new recession, according to economists, is just around the corner.

As for the Trump tax break, it is one big scam on the middle class. The tax law did away with exemptions, property tax deductions, and other deductions which help middle income families. To make it seem like such good thing, they lowered withholding, so workers initially received a bigger paycheck only to discover, come tax time, they had to pay it back. Sure, the standard deduction was increased but that will go down every year until 2015 when it will reach the 2017 level. The writer is probably retired and has a household of two so the loss of the exemption didnt hurt him like it would a young family with five in the household. Keep giving to charity, writer, because the middle class families may need the help in the next few years.

Now, in his opinion Democrats are not only anti-Israel but clearly anti-Semitic. On what does he base such an outlandish charge? Most American Jews are actually Democrats. Did he forget that the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is being indicted for corruption? Trumps rhetoric has emboldened the racist and ant-Semites, and attacks on synagogues, mosques, and black churches has reached a level not seen since the 1950s. Not to mention the separation of Hispanic children from their parents and their being confined to virtual concentration camps. How can anyone in their right mind defend such a man?

History will show that President Trumps corruption and other crimes far surpass anything the writer could imagine.

Robert Hirsch, Miramar Beach

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LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Trump reaping credit due Obama - The Northwest Florida Daily News

From George Washingtons first in 1789 to President Trumps in 2018, Thanksgiving proclamations have been declared by U.S. presidents 164 times. Theyve been proclaimed during times of want as well as times of plenty, during financial crisis as well as economic prosperity, and in times of both war, peace, malaise, and hope. Yet by 2017, this tradition was at risk of disregarding its original purpose until reclaimed by President Trump.

Presidential Thanksgiving proclamations have always kept God at the center. A change occurred, however, with the first Thanksgiving proclamation from Barack Obama in 2009 God was only mentioned once while quoting Washington. From 2010 to 2015, God received only a few passing references. Obama stressed the cultural contributions of Native Americans, typically concluding by asking Americans to be thankful, not to God, but to each other.

In Obamas Thanksgiving proclamation in 2016, God was absent entirely. Obamas changes went against the sentiment of almost all Thanksgiving proclamations that had come before him.

In 1798 and again in 1799, John Adams issued proclamations calling for days of Fasting and Humiliation. After a 15 year gap, James Madison issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in 1814, followed by another in 1815 which marked an end to the War of 1812 and offered acknowledgments to Almighty God for His great goodness manifested in restoring to them the blessing of peace.

After Madison, no president until Abraham Lincoln issued a Thanksgiving proclamation. When, on Oct. 3, 1863, Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday to be held on the last Thursday in November, the proclamation became a presidential tradition. Despite the Civil War, two World Wars, wars in Korea, Vietnam, and throughout the Middle East, an unbroken line of presidential proclamations have reminded Americans to give thanks.

Whats remarkable about the proclamations is their consistency. Americans are called to meet in their accustomed houses of worship, to rest from work, and most importantly to offer prayers of gratitude to God. Andrew Johnson intoned, Resting and refraining from secular labors on that day, let us reverently and devoutly give thanks to our Heavenly Father for the mercies and blessings with which He has crowned the now closing year.

Ulysses S. Grant reminded the nation, It becomes a people thus favored to make acknowledgment to the Supreme Author from whom such blessings flow of their gratitude and their dependence, to render praise and thanksgiving for the same, and devoutly to implore a continuance of God's mercies.

Grover Cleveland was the first president to use his Thanksgiving proclamation to encourage Americans to reunite with forgotten friends and seldom-seen relatives, writing, let there also be on the day thus set apart a reunion of families, sanctified and chastened by tender memories and associations; and let the social intercourse of friends, with pleasant reminiscence, renew the ties of affection and strengthen the bonds of kindly feeling.

Being the son of a Presbyterian minister, and known for his virtuous character, Clevelands Thanksgiving proclamations are especially good. His 1886 proclamation is the first to explicitly call on Americans to remember their private duty to the poor with cheerful gifts and alms.

Beginning with his heartfelt proclamation given less than three months after the assassination of William McKinley in 1901, Theodore Roosevelts proclamations were dependably powerful, reverent, and imbued with a sense of duty and purpose. Roosevelts 1908 proclamation should be read by every American.

Woodrow Wilson began a trend of progressive Democrats infusing Thanksgiving proclamations with politics. After spending 1916 promising to keep the United States neutral in World War I, Wilson utilized his Thanksgiving proclamation in 1917 to endear Americans to the war cause. Franklin Delano Roosevelt used his 1933 proclamation to advocate for workers rights, and his 1934 proclamation to promote social justice. Following FDRs lead, Lyndon Johnson pushed the war on poverty in his 1964 proclamation.

Yet in 1944, FDR gave one of the most explicitly Christian Thanksgiving proclamations ever. After thanking our Heavenly Father for the success of D-Day and the start of Europes liberation from tyranny, FDR suggested Americans engage in daily readings of Holy Scripture from Thanksgiving to Christmas to renew the nations understanding of eternal truths.

Gratitude for Heavens Grace on the United States goes back to Washingtons proclamations, where he wrote of signal favors, Providence, and Gods Divine beneficence in protecting and preserving the nation. Indeed, regular affirmations of Providence continued in the modern proclamations of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, JFK, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush.

With his first opportunity, President Trump returned the Thanksgiving proclamation to its religious origins, imploring Americans to seek God's protection, guidance, and wisdom and recognizing The Almighty as the root of our blessings once more. The presidents 2018 proclamation continued this trend, declaring the nations strong faith in God remains a beacon of hope to all Americans.

And that is certainly something we all give thanks for.

Joshua Lawson is a graduate student at the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College, pursuing a masters degree in American politics and political philosophy. His work has appeared in the Washington Examiner and The Federalist.

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Trump restored references to God in presidential Thanksgiving proclamations after Obama abandoned them - Washington Examiner