Why Michelle Obama will skip Trump’s inauguration

Former first lady Michelle Obama is skipping Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday because she doesn’t want to “plaster” on a smile for someone she fundamentally believes is a threat to American democracy, according to a report.

It was confirmed this week that she would not be attending the president-elect’s swearing-in but her office did not give any further explanation in its brief statement.

Obama also missed Jimmy Carter’s state funeral last week due to a “scheduling conflict”, although it subsequently emerged she had been on vacation in Hawaii.

Interestingly, she has actually not been seen publicly in the company of her husband, former president Barack Obama, since both spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, where her speech championing the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris and attacking the Republican nominee’s “ugly, misogynistic, racist lies” went down a storm.

That said, she did thank Barack for “always having my back, being by my side, and finding ways to make me smile” on Instagram on the occasion of their 32nd wedding anniversary.

Speculation about her absence from Trump’s inauguration has been rife since her announcement and now a source close to Obama has shared the real reason, according to People.

“There’s no overstating her feelings about [Trump]. She’s not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake,” the source told the outlet.

“Michelle doesn’t do anything because it’s expected or it’s protocol or it’s tradition.

“She would be expected to swallow her feelings in the spotlight if she attended his second inauguration.”

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi will also snub the event but Barack Obama and his fellow former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush, as well as their wives Hillary Clinton and Laura Bush, will be in attendance to witness next week’s pomp and ceremony.

But both Donald and Melania Trump refused to attend Joe Biden’s swearing-in in January 2021, making them the first American leaders not to attend the succession since 1869.

Michelle Obama, who served as first lady from 2009 to 2017, did attend Trump’s first inauguration in January 2017 and later revealed her discomfort at being expected to sit in the audience and watch him be sworn in as commander-in-chief.

“To sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display, there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage,” she said on her show The Light Podcast in 2023.

“There was no reflection of the broader sense of America. Many people took pictures of me and they’re like, ‘You weren’t in a good mood.’ No, I was not.”

Obama went on to say that she cried for half an hour after the ceremony “because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years without really being able to show it all”.

Despite a great deal of pressure on her to run for the presidency on the Democratic ticket in future, Obama has largely shunned politics since leaving Washington and “doesn’t feel the need to be a public figure anymore,” according to People’s source.

Her animosity towards Trump is no secret, given that the 45th and 47th president has regularly insulted and attacked her family, referring to her husband disparagingly as “Barack Hussein Obama” and making comments about people of color that have “contributed to Michelle’s opinion of him”, as People’s source put it.

For his part, Barack Obama appears not to mind Trump’s taunts and was seen sharing a laugh and engaging in polite conversation with him during Carter’s funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

Trump reflected on the moment afterwards by telling a reporter of the moment: “It did look very friendly, I must say. I didn’t realize how friendly it looked.

“I saw it on your wonderful network just a little while ago before I came in.

“And I said, ‘Boy, they look like two people who like each other.’ We probably do.”