It’s not quite an age-old adage, but at this point it has long been true: Don’t believe everything you read on the internet.
Michelle Obama, the former first lady, reminded people of this in a recent podcast interview. In rare public comments about her personal life, she discussed swirling rumors that she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, were headed for divorce, and tacitly explained why she didn’t attend President Trump’s inauguration.
The gossip about a possible split was fueled by Mrs. Obama’s absence from two major public events in January that her husband attended: former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral and President Trump’s inauguration.
While her absence at Mr. Carter’s funeral was attributed to a scheduling conflict, a statement about her absence at the inauguration did not include an explanation.
Mrs. Obama now has offered at least a partial answer: She is making decisions for herself.
“I chose to do what’s best for me, not what I had to do,” she said this week on an episode of “Work in Progress,” a podcast hosted by the actress Sophia Bush, referencing a “real big example” of something on her calendar that she skipped.
People “couldn’t even fathom that I was making a choice for myself, that they had to assume that my husband and I are divorcing,” she said. “This couldn’t be a grown woman just making a set of decisions for herself, right? But that is what society does to us.”
That was as close as Mrs. Obama got to directly addressing the rumors of marital discord. And she did not mention Mr. Trump by name on the podcast. In the past, she has expressed dislike for the president, who promoted the lie that her husband was not a U.S. citizen.
“Now is the time for me to start asking myself these hard questions of, ‘Who do I truly want to be every day?’” Mrs. Obama said. “And that changes.”
On the roughly hourlong episode, Mrs. Obama did not waste many words on the rumors, nor did she go into detail. Instead, she emphasized the importance of making her own decisions, especially now that she no longer occupies the White House and her two daughters are adults.
“I learned that I can really only control me,” Mrs. Obama said.
Claire Moses is a Times reporter in London, focused on coverage of breaking and trending news.
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