Hillary Clinton had to balance her duties as the First Lady with her duties as a mother. Even for someone with so much power, she still had relatable struggles when raising her daughter Chelsea Clinton. Hillary recently told an interesting story about nearly abandoning her daughter on vacation.
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Raising Chelsea
Chelsea was just months shy of turning 13 when her father, Bill Clinton, was sworn in as President of the United States. Her parents tried hard to provide her with something akin to a normal upbringing, so they asked the media to limit their coverage of her. They largely disregarded this request, as Chelsea received more television coverage than any presidential child before her.
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Being the President’s daughter certainly had one perk: interesting international vacations. Bill began traveling internationally very early in his presidency. His first visit was to Vancouver for a summit with Russian President Boris Yeltsin in April 1993. His final state visit meant an audience with Queen Elizabeth in December 2000. Chelsea certainly didn’t go on every single trip, but she went on some.
Clinton At The Kremlin
On The Tonight Show, Chelsea and Hillary sat down to essentially play the Newlywed Game. Jimmy Fallon asked Hillary for Clinton’s “craziest family vacation memory.” Hilary did not disappoint.
With Chelsea wearing noise-canceling headphones, Hillary said: “I hope she doesn’t remember this because it was pretty traumatic… We took [Chelsea] to Russia when we went on a state visit when Bill [Clinton] was president, and there’s the formal goodbye, so Bill and I were ushered into the Beast, the big limousine, to head to the airport, not knowing we had left her behind.”
Cue dramatic gasps from the audience. Hillary added, “can you imagine—leaving my only child in the Kremlin?” Chelsea took note of the gasping crowd and successfully remembered the incident. It’s one thing to lose your daughter at a Target, but the Kremlin is a whole other kettle of fish.
Not As Bad As It Seems
Hillary doesn’t say when the trip happened, but it could only have been on one of so many occasions. Bill made five state visits to Moscow during his presidency, including one in 1996 for the G-7 summit. This means Chelsea would have been between 14 and 20 when the incident occurred. Considering how terrified Hillary was, you could safely guess that Chelsea was on the younger side. The May 1995 trip to Moscow would make the most sense.
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The trauma of misplacing a child aside, the Clintons could not have picked a better time to lose their daughter at the Kremlin. Yeltsin and Clinton were about as close as any Russian and American Presidents as either nation has ever had, so one would hope she would simply have been returned safe and sound.