OBAMA SAID 'HE CRIED WHEN MALIA WENT TO COLLEGE'

Barack Obama has said he could not hold back tears after dropping off his daughter Malia at university.

 "It was a little bit like open-heart surgery," the former president said of the moment he took Malia, his eldest daughter, to Harvard University.

"I was proud that I did not cry in front of her," Mr. Obama said.

"But on the way back, the Secret Service was off, looking straight ahead, pretending they weren't hearing me as I sniffled and blew my nose."

"It was rough," he added.

Mr Obama described the moment on Monday at an event for the Beau Biden Foundation. The non-profit was set up in honour of the late son of his former vice-president, Joe Biden.

"At the end of our lives, whatever else we've accomplished, the things that we'll remember are the joys that our children - and hopefully way later, our grandchildren - bring us," Mr Obama said.

Malia, 19, opted to attend Harvard having taken a year gap after high school.

Mr Obama has often talked about the importance of fatherhood to him.

"Of all the things I have done, I am most proud to be your dad," he told his daughters in his presidential farewell speech.

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