Michelle Obama, Stephen Colbert talk White House life, President Obama's quirks

First Lady Michelle Obama was Stephen Colbert's main guest on Tuesday's Late Show, and he introduced her like this: "Everybody likes this woman, even though she is most famous for telling people to eat their vegetables." Obama talked quite a bit about life in the White House and with its most famous occupant, her husband. With just months left at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., there are also things she'll miss, she said. "I find myself choking up because we have raised our kids in the White House, we've had so many amazing experiences," she said, adding less sentimentally that she's already making the kids start packing up their rooms.

The first lady also poked fun at President Obama, imitating his two portrait smiles and his boring disquisitions when daughter Malia asks about his day at the dinner table — something Michelle and daughter Sasha discourage. But "he's really into gossip, so you can get him really focused — because he doesn't have a life," Obama said of her husband. "No, but he's got the NSA, so he can find out what any of us are thinking," Colbert quipped. Obama said that she has made a lot of "first lady faux pas," but has experienced a lot of great things, too, like becoming friends with Beyoncé and ordering room-service french fries during her "sleepover at Buckingham Palace."

Obama then noted that Colbert has his own quirks — he doesn't like being called Steve, apparently — and proceeded to poke at him, too. "How is swagaliciousness achieved?" Colbert asked, citing a comment Obama had made to Oprah. "It's a person that has a lot of swag," she said. "And if you don't know what swag is, Steve, you definitely don't have it."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In the second part of the interview, Obama said she has no sympathy for Bill Clinton or Melania Trump, the spouses of the two people running to replace her husband, and laughed off a question about Melania Trump plagiarizing a bit of her speech. And Michelle Obama and Colbert made only one Donald Trump joke, in a kind of charmingly weird skit where the two of them were pretending to be children in a blanket fort. "Hey, did you know that if you eat too many carrots, you turn orange?" Colbert asked. "Really?" Michelle Obama asked. "Yeah, and if you turn really orange, you have to start saying crazy things and run for president." Very diplomatic. Watch below. Peter Weber