Tag Archives: genevieve-cook

Obama Divorce Story: New Book Claims Michelle Nearly Left Barack in 2000

The controversial new biography of President Barack Obama claims that his wife, Michelle Obama, planned to leave the future president in 2000. Is the divorce story real? Is anything in the book? The unauthorized biography, which Klein claims is based on nearly 200 interviews, has been dismissed by presidential spokesperson Eric Schultz. “Ed Klein has a proven history of reckless fabrication in order to sell books,” he said. “Nobody in their right mind would believe the nonsense in this one.” Nevertheless, the Obama divorce story is the latest revelation in the book – which also discusses his ex Genevieve Cook – to generate major buzz. In The Amateur: Barack Obama in the White House , out this week, Klein claims the divorce nearly happened eight years into the Obamas’ marriage. After Obama failed to listen to his wife’s warnings in challenging Bobby Rush for his U.S. House seat in 2000 and got creamed, their relationship cooled. “During the dark days that followed his defeat, he turned to Michelle for comfort. But she was in no mood for sympathy,” Klein reportedly writes. “He had refused to listen to her warnings about taking on Rush.” The primary left them in debt and Barack depressed, Klein claims. “Michelle actually had divorce papers drawn up,” he writes, citing one of her friends. “Obama was so depressed that some of his friends worried that he was suicidal,” the book adds, without elaboration on that particular point. Obama, of course, was still in the Illinois State Senate, and went on to win a U.S. Senate seat in 2004 that helped establish his national credentials. But Michelle almost vetoed the Senate race, too. Northwestern University professor Steven Rogers told Klein that Obama talked about his ambition after they met at a golf fund-raiser. “My wife will not allow me to run for the Senate until I clear up the debts from my unsuccessful run for Congress,” Obama said, according to Rogers. [Photo: WENN.com]

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Obama Divorce Story: New Book Claims Michelle Nearly Left Barack in 2000

Genevieve Cook, Ex-Girlfriend of President Obama, Reveals His "Sexual Warmth" in New Book

Genevieve Cook, an ex-girlfriend of President Obama, shares some intimate details about their relationship in a new book about the Commander-in-Chief. Barack Obama: The Story , by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist David Maraniss, is the most thorough account of the President’s life not written by Obama. Vanity Fair published excerpts Wednesday. While The Story contains no sordid, shocking tales of impropriety, it portrays Obama as extremely ambitious. Obama’s autobiography Dreams From My Father , while generally true, makes him look less calculating and motivated by his own career, in other words. Barack Obama: The Story also goes into much greater detail about his early life, including romantic relationships, such as that with Genevieve Cook. Using Obama’s writings and ex-girlfriends’ diaries, Maraniss paints a picture of Obama as an intense, conflicted and sometimes brooding intellectual. It was that intelligence that drew Cook to Obama after a chance meeting at that East Village apartment gathering, according to Maraniss’ book. The future President, who in 1983 was a recent graduate of Columbia University, began chatting up the assistant teacher at a party that Christmas. Obama apparently earned Cook’s endorsement, as they went on a date just days later and she spent that night at his tiny Manhattan apartment. While sitting on an orange beanbag chair, the two bonded over the time each spent in Indonesia as youths, then exchanged phone numbers. “I think maybe he cooked me dinner,” she wrote. “Then we went and talked in his bedroom. And then I spent the night. It all felt very inevitable.” Cook remembers that Barack Obama also used to spend Sundays in his room wearing a sarong, drinking coffee and solving crossword puzzles. She described the room as a “a mixture of smells that so strongly speak of his presence, his liveliness, his habits … running sweat, Brut spray deodorant, smoking, eating raisins, sleeping, breathing.” And while Cook wrote about Obama’s “sexual warmth,” she felt he sometimes kept her at arm’s length … and when she said “I love you,” he often responded “thank you” rather than “I love you, too.” Barack first met his future wife, First Lady Michelle Obama , in 1989. Follow the link for Vanity Fair’s full excerpt from Maraniss’ book .

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Genevieve Cook, Ex-Girlfriend of President Obama, Reveals His "Sexual Warmth" in New Book