 "Donald Trump inauguration: Why was Michelle Obama absent?")
Donald Trump has been sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. The inaugural ceremony held indoors in a packed Capitol Rotunda on Monday (January 20) saw the presence of several bigwigs.
From former presidents and their spouses to business elites and celebrities, many prominent figures were at the US Capitol to watch Trump’s return to the White House. Former President Barack Obama was among those attending the inaugural ceremony. However, his wife and former First Lady, Michelle Obama, was missing in action (MIA), sparking curiosity about her whereabouts.
Last week, the former US First Lady’s office announced that Michelle would be skipping the January 20 event. However, no official reason was provided for her absence. “Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former First Lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” the brief statement from the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama said.
Michelle’s decision to skip Trump’s inauguration was an unusual break from traditional protocol, in which former presidents and their spouses typically attend presidential inaugurations regardless of party affiliations.
Let’s take a closer look at why Michelle chose to skip the presidential inaugural.
Michelle’s out, Clintons and others in
Michelle Obama announced earlier that she will be skipping the January 20 event. However, her husband, former US President Barack Obama, was in attendance for the inauguration. This came even as both of them had heavily campaigned for outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris in the presidential elections, who eventually lost out to Donald Trump.
This was the first time that Michelle was not present at the inauguration since her husband left the White House. She attended Trump’s first inauguration when he succeeded Obama in 2017 and also Joe Biden’s in 2021.
Apart from Barack Obama, former US President George W Bush and Laura Bush attended the inauguration, along with former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Notably, this was the second big event that Michelle Obama is giving a miss. She was absent from the memorial service held last week for former US President Jimmy Carter . It was said that she wasn’t in attendance owing to a scheduling conflict. However, Barack Obama attended the service at the National Cathedral in Washington, sitting next to Trump and engaging in animated conversation with him as the programme was getting underway. Other former first ladies, including Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, both attended the Carter event.
Her absence from the service also aroused great curiosity among the people in the United States. According to Google Trends data, the search volume for “ where is Michelle Obama ” was well over 100,000.
It’s important to note here that while a lot of buzz has been created about Michelle's decision to skip Trump’s inauguration, Trump, himself, had chosen to not attend Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021 after falsely claiming that the election was stolen from him.
Michelle’s animosity towards Trump
While neither Michelle nor her office provided any reason for her not attending Trump’s inauguration, many have already begun speculating the reasons. The biggest reason that many believe she stayed away from the Capitol next week is her candid and open disdain for Trump.
Who can forget her troubled expressions, which then became viral, at Trump’s inauguration in 2017? In fact, as late-night US TV presenter Trevor Noah noted in The Daily Show, “Throughout the day, Mrs. Obama’s face was the barometer for most of America’s feelings.”
In 2018, in her best-selling memoir Becoming, she addressed those expressions and even opened up about Donald Trump. “I stopped even trying to smile,” she said, even though the “optics” might not have looked great. “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,” she explained in the book. “But in this case, maybe it did.”
Today, the whole world is Michelle Obama's facial expression. We can't even. #Inauguration pic.twitter.com/WvSb2RDgrp
— iPaulie (@iPaulie) January 20, 2017
In 2023, she once again referred to her expressions at the Trump inauguration during a podcast, saying she was “uncontrollably sobbing” by the end of the day. “Many people took pictures of me and they’re like, ‘You weren’t in a good mood?’ No, I was not! But you had to hold it together like you do for eight years.”
Apart from this, Michelle has also spoken of Trump’s birther conspiracy in her memoir, saying she “would never forgive Trump” for it. “The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly. But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” Obama wrote in the book. “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.”
For those who don’t remember, Trump strongly pushed the theory that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the US and hence, ineligible to serve as president, in 2011 as he floated the possibility of a presidential run. Trump even went further to add a religious connotation to the conspiracy, saying that Obama wasn’t showing his birth certificate because “maybe it says he’s a Muslim.”
Michelle even openly criticised Trump while campaigning for Kamala Harris in the US presidential elections. In her August 2024 Democratic National Convention speech , the former first lady called out Trump. In her passionate speech, she said: “Unfortunately, we know what comes next. We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth.
“My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.
“His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black.”
Later, in October, at a rally to drum up support for Harris in Michigan, she warned Americans that women’s lives would be at risk if Donald Trump returned to the White House.
“If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women will become collateral damage to your rage,” Obama said. “So are you as men prepared to look into the eyes of the women and children you love and tell them you supported this assault on our safety?”
She later added, “Do not buy into the lies that we do not know who Kamala is or what she stands for. This is somebody who understands you, all of you.”
“I am asking y’all from the core of my being to take our lives seriously,” Obama pleaded.
Her comments irked Trump, who later said that Michelle Obama had made a “big mistake” by criticising him. “She was nasty,” Trump said, adding, “That was a big mistake that she made.”
While we still don’t know the real reason why Michelle missed the inauguration, we definitely missed her meme-worthy expressions.
With inputs from agencies
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