Former First Lady Michelle Obama ripped into Donald Trump and Melania in a scathing Instagram post castigating the couple for refusing to gracefully accept the will of voters and help transition President-elect Joe Biden’s team into power.
Obama sharply notes that Trump’s “racist lies” about her husband, former President Barack Obama, didn’t prevent her from assisting Melania Trump to prepare for her new role.
Related: Rightwing pundits are now saying Michelle Obama is a trans woman with “a swinging you-know-what”
The current administration has purposefully refused to give Biden’s team the government office space and funding required by law to help them ramp up to immediately meet America’s problems head-on after Biden’s inauguration. Instead, Trump continues to sulk in the White House, launching dozens of baseless lawsuits in a desperate attempt to change the election results; the Trump legal team has lost or withdrawn all of the cases.
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“This week, I’ve been reflecting a lot on where I was four years ago,” Obama wrote to accompany a photo of her and her husband leaving the White House after Trump’s inauguration. “Hillary Clinton had just been dealt a tough loss by a far closer margin than the one we’ve seen this year. I was hurt and disappointed — but the votes had been counted and Donald Trump had won. The American people had spoken. And one of the great responsibilities of the presidency is to listen when they do.”
“So my husband and I instructed our staffs to do what George and Laura Bush had done for us: run a respectful, seamless transition of power — one of the hallmarks of American democracy. We invited the folks from the president-elect’s team into our offices and prepared detailed memos for them, offering what we’d learned over the past eight years.”
“I have to be honest and say that none of this was easy for me,” she continued. “Donald Trump had spread racist lies about my husband that had put my family in danger. That wasn’t something I was ready to forgive. But I knew that, for the sake of our country, I had to find the strength and maturity to put my anger aside. So I welcomed Melania Trump into the White House and talked with her about my experience, answering every question she had—from the heightened scrutiny that comes with being First Lady to what it’s like to raise kids in the White House.”
“I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do—because our democracy is so much bigger than anybody’s ego.”
Obama called on Republican politicians and Party leaders to stop pretending that election fraud had occurred and to acknowledge the President-elect, saying, “Our love of country requires us to respect the results of an election even when we don’t like them or wish it had gone differently.”
