MICHELLE Obama gave her husband the silent treatment at one point in his campaign for president because so many women “pushed their bodies up against his, slipped phone numbers into his pockets” and whispered lewd suggestions in his ear, a new book out today claims.
In “Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage” (William Morrow), Christopher Andersen reports, “On more than one occasion, Barack tried not to look startled when some random woman in the crowd would grasp him firmly by the derriere — and sometimes try to hold on.”
After an appearance in Peoria, Ill., the future president slid into the back of his SUV, and allegedly said, “Jesus, I wish they’d stop grabbing my ass.”
“Michelle, understandably was not amused,” Andersen writes. He quotes her as saying, “. . . I want to tell these women, ‘Back off. Get a life.’ It’s just embarrassing, that’s all.”
The book relates, “Michelle knew that all the unseemly fawning nourished Barack’s admittedly already oversize ego. ‘He’s loving it,’ she muttered at one point. ‘He’s a man, isn’t he?’ Once again, she resorted to giving him the silent treatment.”
Andersen cites rumors “that it was more than just the random flirting from strangers that was getting to Michelle. Her husband, it would later be reported, had grown close to an attractive young African-American woman [working for the Obama campaign] named Vera Baker.
“When Baker suddenly and inexplicably vanished from the campaign and resurfaced on the Caribbean island of Martinique, tongues reportedly began wagging. A jealous Michelle, it was suggested, had engineered Baker’s departure.”
Andersen writes that Baker later told a reporter, “Nothing happened . . . I don’t have anything to say.”