Selfishly, working with kids gives me joy - it makes me feel like my life has a purpose. And I thought, Imagine what we can do in the White House, particularly with the kids in the D.C. area, many of whom have never set foot on the White House lawn.
I felt, as a lawyer, when I was mentoring and working with kids, that I gained a level of groundedness that I just couldn't get sitting on the forty-seventh floor of a fancy firm. Selfishly, it gives me joy - it makes me feel like my life has a purpose.
Today was the annual Easter egg roll on the White House lawn. Usually when you see something rolling on the White House lawn it's a drunk Secret Service agent.
Directly down the lawn and accross the Ellipse from the White House are those ordered, classic lines of the Jefferson Memorial and the eyes of the 19-foot statue that gaze directly into the White House, a reminder to any of us who might occupy that mansion of the quality of mind and generosity of heart that once abided there and has been so rarely seen there again.
People still assume the White House Correspondents' Association works for the White House, when in reality, it's a group of journalists who cover the White House. It's a branding thing, but because it has the 'White House' before it, people think they're just King Joffrey's goons.
I've said this time and again: My greatest concern coming into the White House was making sure my girls came out whole and normal, and decent and kind, just like I would expect them to if we were living on the South Side of Chicago. And it takes work to keep White House life normal for the kids.
Kids in Washington every year have the big Easter egg roll on the White House lawn. The kids found 300 Easter eggs. They also found about 10,000 missing Hillary emails.
To commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, the three astronauts from Apollo 11 visited the White House. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were allowed to set foot inside the White House, while Michael Collins was forced to drive around in circles outside.
I vividly remember my first day on the White House staff. My office, of course, was in the Old Executive Office Building. I didn't rate one in the West Wing; but don't try to tell me or any of the rest of us working there that we weren't working in the White House.
I'd worked at the White House for two years, and I'd read a bunch of White House memoirs because everybody who works at the White House, even for five minutes, writes a memoir usually not less than 600 pages long - and never without the word 'power' in the title.
I feel like Barack Obama's an Illuminati puppet. He's basically dragged this country down into the worst it's ever been. Like I say about the White House, 'You've built this house of shame'. Everybody looked up at the White House and America and now I think it's like a house of shame. I miss the old days when people were proud to be American.
The black kids, the poor white kids, Spanish-speaking kids, and Asian kids in the US - in the face of everything to the contrary, they still bop and bump, shout and go to school somehow. Their optimism gives me hope.
Moving [to the White House], whatever stresses would be on my husband and me, we could handle; we are grown-ups. But it wouldn't be until the day that my kids came home and said to me, "I like it here," that I'd feel like I could breathe and know that we're all going to be okay here.
I worked with Congress on legislation, gave speeches to CEOs, military generals and Hollywood executives. But I also worked to ensure that my efforts would resonate with kids and families - and that meant doing things in a creative and unconventional way. So, yeah, I planted a garden and hula-hooped on the White House lawn with kids.
I never thought I'd be covering the White House. I never thought I'd be covering the White House for CNN. And I never thought I'd be covering the White House for CNN while Donald Trump was president.
All my playmates were black. I lived in a little community called Archery (ph) in a rural area. And I didn't have any white neighbors at all. So all my kids with whom I fought and wrestled and went fishing and worked in the field and so forth were African-Americans. And that was my life. So when I got to be school age, we had to separate during the daytime, but I always felt like I was in an alien environment when I was in Plains, Georgia with white kids. I was eager to get back where I belonged with my black playmates.
The White House used to be, everybody looked up at the White House and America and everything, and now I think it's like a house of shame.