President Donald Trump (2nd-L) First Lady Melania Trump (L), former President Barack Obama (2nd-R) and former First Lady Michelle Obama walk together following the inauguration, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2017. | Source: Pool / Getty
Little to no information was given to help explain the report that former First Lady Michelle Obama would not be attending Donald Trump‘s presidential inauguration on Monday. However, a look back in time to eight years ago likely more than answers the question of why she won’t be on the West Front of the U.S. Capitol as Trump gets sworn into office for a second time.
The Office of Barack and Michelle Obama said in a statement on Tuesday that “Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies” before adding that “Former first lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration.”
The statement came days after Michelle Obama missed former President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in Washington, D.C., an absence that CNN attributed to a “scheduling conflict” while she was “in Hawaii on an extended holiday vacation.”
It’s unclear if Michelle Obama will still be in Hawaii on Monday. However, what seems to be abundantly clear is that Michelle Obama has had enough of Donald Trump.
Perhaps her absence from his second inauguration is an example of her deciding to “go high” when Republicans “go low,” as they have planned to do once Trump takes office with Project 2025 and more.
And/or, possibly more accurately, her announced absence from Monday’s inauguration can be better understood through her own commentary about Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 as found in her subsequent memoir, Becoming.
Released in 2018, the book had Michelle Obama taking several direct shots at Trump. That includes ripping Trump for promoting the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that questioned whether her husband was born in the United States.
“The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” Michelle Obama wrote. “What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him.”
But she also addressed “the optics” she displayed at Trump’s first inauguration, which may or may not have factored into the decision against attending the event this year, if a brief passage in her memoir was any indication.
“Someone from Barack’s administration might have said that the optics there were bad, that what the public saw didn’t reflect the President’s reality or ideals, but in this case, maybe it did,” Michelle Obama wrote. “Realizing it, I made my own optic adjustment. I stopped even trying to smile.”
Days later, Michelle Obama expounded on that sentiment during an interview with Oprah Winfrey and said she cried after the inauguration.
“When I got on the plane, I sobbed for 30 minutes,” Michelle Obama told Winfrey about a moment that was not included in her memoir. “I think it was just the release of eight years trying to do everything perfectly.”
She also added: “I said to Barack, ‘That was so hard, what we just did. That was so hard.’”
With that context, who could fault Michelle Obama for not attending Trump’s second inauguration?
This is America.
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