Former first lady Michelle Obama has admitted that it felt “almost like a slap in the face” that Democratic voters did not turn out to defeat Donald Trump at the 2016 US election.
What We Know:
- In comments made during her documentary, Becoming, which is released on Wednesday, Mrs. Obama added that the pain of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump was made worse because Black Americans had not voted.
- “I understand the people who voted for Trump,” Mrs. Obama added, specifically calling out the key constituencies that failed to turn out for both Clinton and her husband in the 2010 and 2014 Congressional elections. “The people who didn’t vote at all, the young people, the women, that’s when you think, man, people think this is a game,” she said. “It wasn’t just in this election. Every midterm. Every time Barack didn’t get the Congress he needed, that was because our folks didn’t show up. After all that work, they just couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. That’s my trauma.”
- Describing the “pain” of being on stage during Trump’s inauguration, the former first lady admits: “A lot of our folks didn’t vote. It was almost like a slap in the face.” Mrs. Obama does not provide much direct criticism of her husband’s successor as U.S. President, or the Republican party during the 90-minute film.
- Mrs. Obama, commenting on the legacy of her husband, Barack Obama, also says in the film that she was frustrated every time traditional Democratic voters did not turn up to vote. In September 2018, President Obama said he had been silent since leaving office because he wanted to dedicate more time to his family, but also because there was a “wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage”.
Becoming will show the former first lady on her 2018 world book tour, while providing anecdotes about the 56-year-old’s upbringing in Chicago and life inside the White House. Becoming was made by Higher Ground, the Obama owned production company that won an Oscar earlier this year with its first film, American Factory.
