Historian David Garrow — who wrote Obama’s 2017 biography “Rising Star: The Making of Barack Obama” — Spoke recently in an interview with journalist David Samuels about various aspects of the president’s life, both politically and personally. Garrow said a letter to an ex-girlfriend was the most surprising thing he learned about former President Obama.
The New York Post reported that the redacted portion of the 1982 letter — which is owned by Emory University and no one is allowed to photograph — was transcribed by Garrow’s friend Harvey Klehr and sent to Garrow.
“In regard to homosexuality, I must say that I believe this is an attempt to remove oneself from the present, a refusal perhaps to perpetuate the endless farce of earthly life,” Obama wrote in 1982. “You see, I make love to men daily, but in the imagination.”
Obama, 21 years old at the time, said in the letter to Alex McNear that his mind was part male and part female.
Garrow said that the first time he met Obama at the White House in the Oval Office, Obama had “this big pile of all his journals over the years.”
“And he’s arranged it this way on purpose—to show me that he has them, and so he can tell me that I can’t see them,” he said. “He’s got this big sack, I want to call it a cloth sack or a canvas sack, in the bottom of which are the journals. And then on the top of it is the typescript printout of my manuscript. So he’s carrying them around together.”
“I wouldn’t be astonished if he burns them,” he said.
When asked why Obama did not want anyone to see his journals and letters, Garrow said, “He wants people to believe his story. For me to conclude that Dreams from My Father was historical fiction—oh God, did that infuriate him.”
“I make love to men daily, but in the imagination,” former President Barack Obama wrote in a 1982 letter to an ex-girlfriend.
Why would Obama say this? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/lXo6fggONy
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) August 12, 2023
