President Obama rejected the suggestion that his basketball game with male congressional leaders was somehow sexist because no women were invited. Obama defends all-male hoops game

President Barack Obama spoke candidly about the tensions in the early days of his marriage to First Lady Michelle Obama during an interview with NBC News’ Savannah Guthrie Wednesday.

Today, he said, the Obama family is not a typical family because of the president’s financial success and the cushions of living life in the White House.


“Five years ago, six years ago, though, we were having a lot of negotiations,” Obama said. Michelle Obama, he said, wanted to know, if their daughters get sick, “why is it that she's the one who has to take time off of her job to go pick them up from school, as opposed to me? You know— the girls need to shop for clothes. You know? Why is it that it's her burden,” the president said.

“The truth is,” Obama said, that Michelle “still had to make sacrifices … of the sort that I didn’t have to make.”

Men, he said, “are still a little obtuse about this stuff.” And he said men “need to be knocked across the head every once in awhile” to see the female perspective, and be sure everyone in the family is treated fairly.

Obama called his wife “my most important advisor,” and said that “in terms of broad strokes advice, what ordinary people are going through— she is somebody who I think is deeply attuned to it. She's somebody who grew up in a working class family. She understands the incredible difficulties of work/family balance. Because she had to go through it. Up until we got to— to the White House— she was working. Raising two small children. A husband who was also working, and was away a lot.”

Obama also rejected the suggestion that his basketball game with male congressional leaders was somehow sexist because no women were invited.

“I think this is bunk,” Obama said. He explained that he invited the regular House of Representatives pick-up basketball players. “I don't know if there are women who— were Members of Congress who play basketball on a regular basis,” Obama said. “I don't think there are. You know, I don't think sends any kind of message or signal whatsoever.”

On that point, the president seemed to differ from his own press secretary, who took a different tack when asked about the basketball game at the White House briefing. “I would say that the point is well taken,’ said Robert Gibbs. “The President obviously is someone who, as the father of two young daughters, has an avid interest in their competing against anybody on the playing field. The President has certainly played basketball and other sports with women in the past, and I anticipate he'll do so in the future.”