The secret Barack Obama hid from Michelle during Buckingham Palace visit
A new book by former President Barack Obama’s national security advisor has revealed a few secrets from Barack and Michelle Obama’s meeting with Queen Elizabeth during their visit to Buckingham Palace in May 2011.
Ben Rhodes in The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House reveals that despite feeling in awe of the Queen, Barack favourably compared the sovereign to his beloved grandmother, whom he nicknamed “Toot.”
“I really love the queen,” then-President Obama told Rhodes, according to the book. “She’s just like Toot, my grandmother. Courteous. Straightforward. All about what she thinks. She doesn’t suffer fools.”
The Obamas’ visit to Buckingham Palace also included an odd rodent drama.
According to the book, Barack was in a room going over his speech with his aides as Michelle was getting ready to sleep in another room when, suddenly, a butler appeared.
“Mr. President, pardon me,” the butler said. “There’s a mouse.”
“Don’t tell the first lady,” Barack quickly replied.
“We’ll try to catch it, sir.”
“Just don’t tell the First Lady,” Barack repeated, according to the book.
And when Rhodes jokingly said to Barack that maybe the monarchy “really is a dying empire,” Obama laughed and said: “No, they’ve still got a lot going on. Did you see the bling on the queen?”
He added, looking around the “ornate” room, “I’m just a few years away from being in the State Senate and living in a condo.”