You’re never too old to be critiqued by your mother. Sasha and Malia Obama are learning that the hard way this week after their mother, Michelle Obama, called them out for their “weak” cocktails. And in true mom fashion, she didn’t do it just once. She did it twice, bringing it up in two separate interviews. (Yes, Malia and Sasha are adults now who can drink alcohol and make cocktails for their parents.)
Obama dished on her daughters’ bartending skills while promoting her new book, The Light We Carry, and recounted how Malia, 24, and Sasha, 21, invited their parents over to their shared L.A. apartment for some predinner drinks. “They had prepared a charcuterie tray and tried to make two very weak martinis,” Obama told Robin Roberts in a 20/20 interview. Obama said they realized they didn’t have all the ingredients for martinis but didn’t go into the details. One assumes both she and Barack Obama took some polite sips if nothing else. Michelle then told the story again in an interview with the Today Show’s Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb, saying, “The martinis were a little weak. I don’t think they really knew what it was.” Ouch.
In her 20/20 interview, Obama added that, while their cocktails were weak, Malia and Sasha were very firm about their house rules — specifically when it came to coasters. “They didn’t care about the water marks on my table in the White House, but ooh they got their coasters out,” she told Roberts, adding that she was proud to see her daughters “were paying attention.”
Housecleaning and martini-making skills aside, Michelle said she is proud to see her daughters grow closer as adults. “The thing I love the most is that those two girls are each other’s best friends,” she told Kotb and Hager. “To see them in that place when they’re one another’s support systems and they’ve got each other’s backs — it’s the thing a mother would want.”
