Former First Lady Michelle Obama chastised President Trump on social media over the riots that took place Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol.
What We Know:
- The statement posted to social media on Thursday expressed Obama’s disdain and emotions towards the violent events that took place in D.C. She expresses that the riots were a “fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can’t handle the truth of his own failures.”
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- The post was made in response to Trump-supporting terrorists violently ambushing the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, fueled by the President’s baseless claims that the election was stolen or that there was widespread fraud. The catastrophic events left five people dead.
- Obama touched on the lenient response shown by law enforcement officers towards the mob of mainly-white protesters. She suggested that police retaliation would have been far stronger if the rioters were Black. “What if these rioters had looked like the folks who go to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday?” she said. “What would have been different?”
- She further explains the emotional pain it brings her to see such obvious displays of racism among the crowd, and the officers meant to enforce the law. “Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday’s riot and this summer’s peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful,” she continued. “It hurts. … in city after city, day after day, we saw cracked skulls and mass arrests, law enforcement pepper-spraying its way through a peaceful demonstration for a presidential photo op.”
- Obama ends her statement by focusing on the positives that have been overlooked by the terrorist attacks on the Capitol building. She mentions that “even in the darkness, there are glimmers of hope” and celebrates the victories of Rev. Warnock and Jon Ossoff, who were officially elected to the U.S. Senate last week.
Although Michelle and Barack Obama have tried to keep from criticizing the Trump administration, they have recently become more vocal about the 45th President as he dangerously attempts to unravel this country’s democracy.
