New Book Alleges Michelle Obama Was Barack Obama’s Second Choice

See, the devil is busy, y’all. That’s the only way to describe this mess.

David J. Garrow has written a new book, “Rising Star: The Making Of Barack Obama,” which delves into Barack Obama’s pre-presidential life. Among the many claims was one alleging Obama proposed to a woman TWICE before settling for Michelle. Not. Today. Satan!

The Washington Post got their hands on the book and gave this review:

Garrow portrays Obama as a man who ruthlessly compartmentalized his existence; who believed early on that he was fated for greatness; and who made emotional sacrifices in the pursuit of a goal that must have seemed unlikely to everyone but him. Every step — whether his foray into community organizing, Harvard Law School, even the choice of whom to love — was not just about living a life but about fulfilling a destiny.

The woman in question is Sheila Miyoshi Jager, a woman that Obama “lived with and loved in Chicago.” She’s now a professor at Oberlin College. The Post goes on to recount Garrow’s interview with Jager, in which she opens up about the multiple proposals from Obama.

“In the winter of ‘86, when we visited my parents, he asked me to marry him,” she told Garrow. Her parents were opposed, less for any racial reasons (Barack came across to them like “a white, middle-class kid,” a close family friend said) than for concern about Obama’s professional prospects, and because her mother thought Sheila, two years Obama’s junior, was too young. “Not yet,” Sheila told Barack. But they stayed together.

In early 1987, when Obama was 25, she sensed a change. “He became. . . so very ambitious” very suddenly,” she told Garrow. “I remember very clearly when this transformation happened, and I remember very specifically that by 1987, about a year into our relationship, he already had his sights on becoming president.”

Garrow goes on to claim that Barack asked for her hand in marriage again when he was on his way to Harvard University, but because she was heading out on a trip to Seoul, she declined his offer … yet again. Apparently, they continued seeing each other periodically, even after he began dating Michelle at Harvard.

“Barack and Sheila had continued to see each other irregularly throughout the 1990-91 academic year, notwithstanding the deepening of Barack’s relationship with Michelle Robinson,” Garrow writes. (“I always felt bad about it,” Sheila told the author more than two decades later. Once Barack and Michelle were married, his personal ties to Sheila was reduced to the occasional letter (such as after the 9/11 attacks) and phone call (when he reached out to ask whether a biographer had contacted her).

Look, this story may be true, but until Sheila provides some receipts, we’ll be giving her the strong side-eye.