Michelle Obama not only said Friday she won’t be running for president because Americans “aren’t ready for a woman president,” she also implied they weren’t ready for her in the White House as a black First Lady.
Obama cited Kamala Harris’s loss to Donald Trump in 2024 as her evidence of the country’s sexism, saying Americans have “a lot of growing up to do.”
“As we saw in this past election, sadly, we ain’t ready,” she told an audience at Brooklyn Academy of Music while promoting her new book, The Look. “That’s why I’m like, don’t even look at me about running, because you all are lying. You’re not ready for a woman. You are not.”
“You know, we’ve got a lot of growing up to do,” she continued. “And there’s still, sadly, a lot of men who do not feel like they can be led by a woman, and we saw it.”
Obama appeared to amplify previous complaints on her book tour that she was under a “particularly white hot glare” as a black First Lady, saying even Democrats were trying to destroy her when she became “effective” when her husband was running in the primaries for the 2008 nomination.
She told the audience:
Let me be clear, these were our people who were going after me. This started when we were running against our party. The beginning of turning me into an angry shrew who diminished her husband, who didn’t love her country, who was unpatriotic…These people are lying. They’re making stuff up because they’re trying to win.
She said when she got to the White House she had to “quickly define myself” and “I didn’t even feel I had the support of the campaign” because “they were white folks, too.”
“So, I knew this immediately. And I knew this coming in as First Lady, that I was in charge of my story, my narrative,” she said. “I had to be smarter than them. I had to outsmart everyone and that came to everything I did, including what I wore.”
Obama’s book, released earlier this month, explores her experience with fashion and beauty while also claiming that women in politics are often judged based on their physical appearance instead of leadership qualities.
While the former First Lady claims she faced heavy criticism during her time in the White House, she was often celebrated in the legacy media and appeared on the cover of Vogue three times.
As Breitbart News reported, apparently lost on Obama is the experience of current first lady Melania Trump. A former super model, she has been snubbed by the establishment media and leftist magazines, despite her status as a high fashion figure throughout her life.
Veteran journalist Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
