Michelle Obama chastised President Donald Trump over Wednesday’s riots at the Capitol and called him ‘infantile and unpatriotic’ before delivering an emotional critique of how police are responding to the mob compared to the Black Lives Matter protests this summer.
In a statement posted on social media on Thursday, the former first lady said the riots are a “fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can not handle the truth of his own failures.”
Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday after the president delivered a speech against the election results, claiming that the election was falsely stolen from him and encouraged the crowd to fight back. The march quickly began to turn into chaos and bloodshed after a group of rioters stormed the Capitol building, took over the Senate Hall and forced lawmakers and reporters to hide. In response, Trump posted a video on social media in which he repeated more false lies and supporters said, “We love you.”
Obama also addressed the reaction of the law enforcement, which she suggested would have been much stronger if the rioters had been black. “What if these rioters looked like the people who go to the Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday?” she said. “What would have been different?”
“The gap between the reactions to yesterday’s riots and the summer’s peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful,” she added. “It hurts. … in city after city, day after day, we saw cracked skulls and mass arrests, pepper of law enforcement spraying through a peaceful protest for a presidential photo.”
Obama compared athletes who knelt during the national anthem, which Trump and his allies loudly criticized as disrespectful to the flag, to Wednesday’s ‘unpatriotic’ scene, saying it made it painfully clear that some Americans might actually demote the flag. . and symbols of our country. They just have to look the right way. ‘
Obama ended by saying, “even in the dark, there are glimmers of hope.” The path to recovery is not for one person, politician or political party. But together we can start with ‘honest, unwavering love for our country’.
Both Barack and Michelle Obama largely shied away from criticizing their successors during the start of the Trump presidency. When the 2020 campaign got underway and Covid-19 devastated the country, both began to speak louder. During her speech at the Democratic National Convention, the former first lady Trump called ‘the wrong president for our country’.
“He’s had more than enough time to prove he can do the job, but he’s clear about his head,” she said. “He can not meet this moment. He simply can not be who we need to be for us.”
