Donald Trump’s second inauguration, back in January, was attended by several people who have tangled with Donald Trump over the years, from all three of his general election opponents (Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris), as well as his longtime enemy Barack Obama, and the former vice president, Mike Pence, who he once left for dead, in the very building where the ceremony took place.
Notably missing from the festivities was the former First Lady, Michelle Obama. A few weeks earlier, Michele had also skipped Jimmy Carter’s funeral, where her husband and the man who succeeded him as president were seated next to each other and appeared to engage in a friendly conversation.
Why wasn’t the former first lady there? Speculation trended from everything from Michelle having such an intense dislike of Trump that she wouldn’t be in the same room with him, to possible trouble in the Obama marriage.
“It started with not having anything to wear,” the former first lady explained. “I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right?” https://t.co/nfVspDDC4e
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Now, Michele has broken her silence. And per HuffPost, it was not because her marriage to the former president is in any trouble.
Speaking on the podcast she hosts with her brother Craig, along with guest actress Taraji P. Henson, Michelle finally gave the reason.
“People couldn’t believe that I was saying no for any other reason, they had to assume that my marriage was falling apart,” Michelle said on the podcast. “It took everything in my power to not do the thing that … was perceived as right, but do the thing that was right for me. That was a hard thing for me to do.”
Michelle stuck with the plan of not going- by not making a plan for how to dress for the event.
“It started with not having anything to wear,” she said. “I was like, if I’m not going to do this thing, I got to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a dress ready, right? Because it’s so easy to just say let me do the right thing.”
It’s part of what she calls “the art of saying no.”
““It’s a muscle that you have to build,” Michelle said. “And I think we suffered, because it’s almost like we started training late in life to build that muscle, right? I am just now starting to build it.”
The discussion starts at the 43-minute mark of the podcast:
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
