The former first lady was there to promote her new Netflix cooking series, Waffles + Mochi, which features Michelle and a cast of puppets teaching kids about food. TIME called the show “wonderful” and “the Sesame Street of food TV.”
Jimmy Kimmel’s question for her wasn’t exactly family-friendly, however. And as the host observed, it wasn’t the first time he’d put Michelle on the spot about this topic. “A couple of years ago, I interviewed you in Tacoma, Washington, in front of a big group of people,” Kimmel recalled. “You were on your book tour. We had a great talk, it was a lot of fun, and everyone was very excited to see you.”
“I asked you that on the night that SEAL Team Six took out Osama bin Laden at your husband’s order: did you and your husband make love that night to celebrate?” he asked, prompting laughter and some applause from his audience.
Michelle wasn’t going to entertain this line of questioning and plead the fifth, although not before turning the question back on Kimmel and hilariously shutting him down. Here’s what she said.
Michelle Obama accused Jimmy Kimmel of being “obsessed” with this question, making the host laugh.
“You know, I have to tell your audience that for some very sick reason, you are very obsessed with this portion of that major historical event in a way that no one else — no one, in the history of all the conversations I’ve had — has anybody drilled down on this particular point like you, Jimmy Kimmel,” she told him. “So I turn that back on you.”
“That’s what you want to know,” the former first lady continued. “You’re still that little boy in your bedroom, under the cover with the flashlight, going, I hope nobody sees me.” Kimmel nodded and agreed, taking her refusal to answer in good humor.
Barack Obama also dodged the question on a previous Kimmel appearance in 2020, as E! Online reported. “I suspect she was asleep,” Barack told the host, thinking back to the night Osama Bin Laden was shot.
“‘Cause the truth of the matter, most of the time, by the time I was done working, she’d be snoozing,” the former president added. “So, Michelle goes to bed about 9 o’clock.”