Eight years in the past, Michelle Obama stood beside her husband at Donald Trump’s first inauguration, marking a second of nationwide transition. Now as we method Trump’s second inauguration on Jan. 20, it feels like issues are going to look just a little totally different.
Michelle Obama’s workplace introduced Tuesday that she might be skipping Trump’s inauguration this yr. Barack Obama has confirmed that he might be in attendance, together with George W. and Laura Bush and Invoice and Hillary Clinton.
Michelle has been notably absent from key occasions this month, together with the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter. Her absence from such a major second drew consideration, particularly as Carter’s funeral grew to become a gathering of former presidents and first girls, lots of whom have maintained cordial relationships with the Biden administration.
Michelle’s choice to buck custom highlights the tense relationship between the Obamas and the Trumps, a dynamic that has been something however cordial through the years—besides, apparently, after they’re face-to-face—and an ethos from the Democratic Occasion that it’ll not normalize the rise of an authoritarian, “fascist” chief.
The stress between Trump and the Obamas has been palpable for years. One of many earliest and most damaging assaults Trump leveled in opposition to Barack was the false and racially charged “birther” conspiracy, which started in 2011. Trump falsely claimed that Barack was born in Kenya and, subsequently, was ineligible to function president. This lie, which he perpetuated for years, was a key pillar within the rise of the MAGA motion—a marketing campaign rooted in misinformation and divisiveness.
And all through the 2016 marketing campaign, Trump took goal at Michelle, an influential and revered determine in her personal proper. Trump has lengthy used the phrase “nasty” to explain ladies who problem or disagree with him, and Michelle was no exception.
“I always tried to be so nice and respectful,” Trump as soon as stated. “She opened up a little bit of a box.”
Ever poised, Michelle referred to as out Trump’s habits with candor and readability
“For years, Trump did every little thing in his energy to attempt to make individuals concern us. His restricted and slender view of the world made him really feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, extremely educated, profitable individuals who additionally occurred to be Black,” she stated in the course of the 2024 Democratic Nationwide Conference.
Additionally throughout her DNC speech, she requested, “Who’s going to inform him that the job he is at present in search of would possibly simply be a type of ‘Black jobs?’”
Michelle’s choice to skip Trump’s inauguration is not only a private one, however it additionally speaks to the bigger context of the Obamas’ legacy and Democrats’ refusal to assimilate with an administration intent on setting fireplace to democracy.
