Obama: Michelle will "never run for office"
President Obama emphatically said in an interview that aired Friday that his wife will never run for elected office.
“She will never run for office,” the president said on Sway Calloway’s radio show “Sway in the Morning.”
“She is as talented and brilliant a person as there is and I could not be prouder of her, but Michelle does not have the patience or the inclination to actually be a candidate herself. That’s one thing y’all can take to the bank,” Mr. Obama added.
Both the president and first lady have said before that she has no plans to run for office, but her appearances on the 2016 campaign trail rallying supporters for Hillary Clinton have raised questions about her political aspirations. The first lady has become one of the most powerful surrogates for Clinton and is one of the most popular Democrats. She appeared with Clinton for the first time together at a campaign rally Thursday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She was also strongly praised for delivering a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in July.
In March, she said she won’t run for president.
“I will not run for president. No, nope, not going to do it,” Mrs. Obama said at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, adding that she’d like to focus on her daughters Sasha and Malia.
At an event in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in January, the president poured cold water on the prospect of his wife running for president in the future after an audience member asked him since he can’t run for another term, can voters convince his wife to launch a White House bid.
“No, no,” Mr. Obama said. “No, no, no...no, no.”
“Let me tell ya, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes and Michelle is not running for president. That, I can tell you,” he said.
After the president leaves office in January, they plan to move into a nine-bedroom mansion in the northwest quadrant of Washington, D.C. and plan to stay for at least a few more years until their youngest daughter Sasha graduates from high school.