Flashback: First Trump transition period ushered in changes to Obama family security detail

Tuesday's election and the pivotal transition period now underway is always full of all sorts of political and logistical upheaval for the families of the sitting president as well as the incoming leader.

That was certainly the case back in 2017, when Donald Trump took the reins from Barack Obama, spurring a host of changes in the security arrangements for the outgoing president's daughters, Sasha and Malia, as Inquisitr recalls.

Protective detail recalled

As the two young daughters of a sitting president, Sasha and Malia Obama's lives -- for eight of their most formative years -- were characterized by the consistent, and perhaps sometimes suffocating, presence of Secret Service agents charged with their protection.

Everything from school drop-off to driving lessons to prom, there were hardly any milestones the girls experienced or achieved that were not accompanied by armed guards.

During a past appearance at the Essence Festival, former first lady Michelle Obama recalled, “My kids had armed guards with them at all times.”

She continued, “Imagine trying to have your first kiss [around] a bunch of men [with guns] and earpieces.”

Mrs. Obama even noted that Secret Service agents played a significant role in something as simple as childhood sleepovers, initiating sweeps of hosts' homes before the girls were allowed to attend, joking, “I mean, I'm surprised my kids have any friends, you know?”

Election upends arrangements

It was in 2017, upon the election of Donald Trump to the presidency, that the Obama girls' lives were able to assume something that more closely resembled normality.

In 2012, their father signed the Former Presidents Protection Act into law, granting protection to former commanders in chief, their spouses, and their children upon leaving office.

Though the benefits of protection extend to former presidents and spouses for the remainder of their lives, first sons and daughters only receive the benefit until they turn 16 and given that Sasha was indeed 16 at the time of their father's departure from the Oval Office, and Malia was 19, their mandatory security details came to a swift end.

According to Barack Obama, however, his daughters were not terribly disappointed by that fact, and he later told late-night talk show host James Corden, “First of all, them as teenagers having Secret Service guys follow them when they were going out on dates, I think probably has shut down their interest in public service. They still have PTSD from guys talking into their wrist microphones and glasses as they're trying to go to a music concert.”

Enjoying their freedom

Now far removed from their time in the D.C. fishbowl, Sasha and Malia Obama are young adults leading highly independent lives on the West Coast.

As People noted earlier this year, Malia, now 26, is a Harvard University graduate who is making a name for herself within the film industry, while Sasha, now 23, graduated from the University of Southern California last year after transferring from earlier studies at the University of Michigan.

Michelle Obama has remarked on the pride she feels knowing that the young women are residing together in Los Angeles as they embark on their own unique paths, saying, “It feels good to know that the two girls you raised find solace at a kitchen table with one another. It's like the one thing you want for them.”