Chapter 12
Privacy is scarce when you’re First Lady. Very little happens without lots of people knowing. I’d get a call from my personal aide, Jordan Montoya, saying, “How much longer will you be at the doctor?” I’d say, “How do you know I’m at the doctor? Do you have me chipped?”
My every movement was tracked by Secret Service and made available to staff via radio. I found it hard to get used to constantly being monitored. I thought I knew about what it meant to have Secret Service protection, but the First Lady has a much bigger detail than the Second Lady.
Your code name is chosen when you come into protection. They give you a letter from the alphabet and let you choose your word. Our letter was C. Joe came up with Celtic because he’s Irish. I became Capri because my family’s from Italy. The grandkids had cute names like Cookie, Coaster, and Cowboy.
Every bit of mail you received—your bank statement, a letter from your grandmother—all of it was opened for security reasons.
The constant attention made little escapes feel luxurious.
One beautiful, hot summer night, Joe was away, but Naomi and Ashley were around, and someone said, “Let’s go to the top of the White House!
” Giggling with childlike freedom, we clambered onto the roof—and kept climbing until we were on the walkway where the sharpshooters with their long guns usually stationed themselves.
The view was spectacular, and it felt like such a treat to be out there.
When we went out on the Truman balcony off the Yellow Oval, a buzzer rang downstairs, which meant they’d have to clear President’s Park, known as the Ellipse.
I was told that the protocol was put in place because during the Obama administration, someone had shot at the White House from there, and it hit right by their bedroom window.
When the weather was nice, we’d long to have dinner out on the balcony, but we only did that rarely because we knew that if we did, hundreds of tourists would be asked to clear the area.
There are layers of Secret Service, including the CAT squad, the “counter assault team” sharpshooters who are often hidden on rooftops and in trees.
They’re a special division of the Secret Service.
They look like they’re made out of bricks, and you can’t miss them with their dark glasses and gear.
They’re extremely impressive, and that includes the about one in four Secret Service agents who are women.
We also had specialists, so if you were skiing, you’d have an agent who was an expert skier.
Same with biking, swimming. There’d be a frogman in the water if Joe went to the beach.
You also had K-9 units. Bomb-sniffing dogs would check out just about any room we entered.
They’d run through my school before I taught, into the nail salon before I got a manicure, into my workout studio before a barre or cycle class, all over my hotel room before I went inside.
If we traveled by car, the roads and bridges would be shut down to let us through.
The state police and the local police would coordinate it.
It took me a long time to get used to that.
When they drove us through, they’d ignore traffic lights, and every time we came up to a red light, I’d press my foot down on an imaginary brake to stop.
When I wound up without a driver again after eight years as Second Lady, I had to learn everything about driving again.
Until I got back into the habit, I found it scary, especially on I-95.
When you have protection, being spontaneous is difficult.
During the White House years, Joe also had a press corps, so you’d have to coordinate with them if you were going to do anything.
If we were going to walk down the street to the beach, we’d have to let the press know so they could cover that movement.
Being First Lady could feel like a catch-22.
You were encouraged to use your platform to do good, but not to be too aggressive in pursuing policy goals, lest you be seen as overreaching.
If you knew too little about what you were talking about, then you were an embarrassment.
If you knew too much, you were trying to rule the world.
At White House and international events, there were more moments of confusing protocol than I can count, instances of Wait, did he not shake my hand on purpose?
Or Was I supposed to exit stage right? When it came to my clothes, the scrutiny was relentless.
Once, in 2021, I wore a green knit dress with a leather hem, paired with patterned black tights.
I had allegedly been wearing fishnets and therefore been dressing too provocatively.
To me, they were just pretty lace stockings.
Another time, I used a scrunchie to pull back my hair, which resulted in a deluge of commentary.
This was on the way to Camp David; I’d stopped at a bakery to pick up brownies and cupcakes for Valentine’s Day.
Perhaps most dramatically, in October 2022, I was accused of having dressed down Joe’s staff earlier that year.
Joe was downstairs doing a news conference while I was upstairs watching on live TV.
The questions kept coming, and he kept answering them, and time kept rolling on—half an hour, an hour, an hour and a half…
I’d go do something and come back, and he was still answering questions.
People at home, I was sure, had long since stopped watching.
It’s traditionally somebody’s job to step up to the podium and say, “Thank you, Mr. President.” But no one did.
The Q&A went on and on for nearly two hours, to the point of absurdity.
When it finally came to a close—probably because the journalists had all run out of ink in their pens and space in their notebooks—I went over to the Treaty Room, where the staff had gathered.
“Whose responsibility is it to stop it, because he will go on forever?” I said.
There’s long been a fear of the First Lady because she’s the closest person to the president, and everyone recognizes that, so I usually kept my thoughts to myself.
On that day, though, I said what I thought.
My question leaked to the press—and there it was: another bad news day I hadn’t seen coming.