Washington: President Barack Obama encountered a jealous boyfriend, who jokingly asked him not to touch his girlfriend while voting in Chicago for the November 4 midterm election, local television stations reported.
As Obama was casting his ballot at the Martin Luther King Junior community centre in Chicago on Monday, he was standing beside a woman, Aia Cooper, whose boyfriend — Mike Jones — approached them and said jokingly to the President: “Mr President, don’t touch my girlfriend.”
“I really wasn’t planning on it,” Obama responded in a repartee, the reports said on Tuesday.
Laughing, he added: “There’s an example of a brother just embarrassing me for no reason.”
Clearly embarrassed, Cooper apologised for her boyfriend’s behaviour, telling Obama that she knew he was going to “say something smart”, but she did not know what.
But Obama imagined how she would retell the encounter: “I can’t believe Mike, he is such a fool. I was just mortified ... But fortunately, the president was nice about it, so it’s all right.”
Obama gave her a kiss. “Give him something to talk about.”
Jones later justified his remark to reporters, saying that everyone was so quiet that he thought he had to say something to “make people laugh”.
The President showed up at the community centre by surprise on Monday morning. The site is near the house where he lived until the time he was elected the President in 2008.
