Michelle Obama has been promoting her coffee table book, The Look, for weeks now. She’s been making the rounds of talk shows and podcasts, not 60 Minutes or the New York Times. Well, Michelle gave a lengthy interview to Jamie Kern Lima, who is good friends with the Duchess of Sussex (and Lima interviewed Meghan months ago as well). Lima asked Michelle the question everyone wanted to ask: what does MO think of Donald Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing? Traditionally, the East Wing housed the First Lady’s offices and entertaining spaces, and that’s where Michelle’s office and staff worked from during the Obama administration. Well, Michelle had some thoughts:
Former first lady Michelle Obama got candid about her response to seeing the East Wing of the White House being demolished. President Donald Trump previously ordered the East Wing, including the office of the First Lady, the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and more, to be demolished in favor of putting in his $300 million ballroom. During a Tuesday, Nov. 25, appearance on the Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast, Obama, who served as the first lady alongside her husband, former President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2017, shared her feelings while seeing the demolition take place.
“What did it feel like for you and your body when you saw the East Wing being demolished?” host Kern Lima asked Obama.
The mother of two noted, “It’s not about me, it’s about us and our traditions and what they stand for. I think in my body I felt confusion because I’m like, ‘Well, who are we? What do we value and who decides that?’ ”
The concept of reevaluating the nation in the wake of the current administration has been on the former first lady’s mind.
“That’s the thing that’s going through my head a lot lately. ‘Who are we? What are the rules?’ ” she expressed. “Because I’m confused by what are our norms and our mores, not the laws, but how do we live together? That’s the part of it that hurts. It’s not the house … I’m just, you know, just trying to understand the assignment. And so I think I felt a loss for us as a nation.”
And while she might feel one way about what the demolition might symbolize on a grand scale, Obama said that it wasn’t like seeing her own house being torn down.
“Personally, you know, that’s not our house,” she explained. “That’s the People’s House.”
That was the feeling a year ago, when Trump “won” again – nothing matters anymore, there are no norms or traditions or rules anymore. None of it matters. They elected him after he incited a violent insurrection in which his supporters smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol. Of course they didn’t care that he demolished the White House East Wing and paved over Jackie Kennedy’s garden. Of course they don’t care that he’s turned the Oval Office into a tacky and gaudy gold-plated disaster. There is no “normal” anymore.
Photos/screencaps courtesy of the Jamie Kern Lima Show. Additional pic courtesy of Getty.
Trump has ushered in a level of nihilism and yet at the same time I can still feel outrage. At best, maybe one day a future president’s kids can roller-skate in the ballroom or something. Host some rollerskating parties. Bc right now what a waste of space.
My hope is that one day after this orange sh*t stain is gone, we’ll have somebody decent in the White House that stands up and says, this was never okay and we don’t need the reminder that it happened. My hope is that that decent person will reverse what was done to the People’s House and restores the East Wing and the rose garden.
What we have to remember is that “they” only win because they ALWAYS play dirty.
Most liberals, people who vote Democrat, are essentially decent people. We have our flaws, many of them! And our bigotries and blindnesses. We fail plenty of times at doing, or even wanting to do, the right thing.
But still, we’re mostly decent. We want to take care of each other. We believe that it’s wrong that people who work or serve in the military need food stamps. We think everyone should have decent healthcare and a place to live. We want to help starving, sick children. We believe in a country based on laws, not the whims of a dictator.
The Republican party was captured decades ago by people who have no empathy, no feelings of gratitude or responsibility toward others. Instead they are motivated by greed, lust for power, and fear. And they’ve used every dirty trick in the book to fool a certain segment of our society into believing that they want to support and defend them. Which is, and has always been, a LIE.
But those people are in a significant minority, and we can’t ever forget that. They’ve successfully turned our own idealism against us. But we don’t have to let them keep us down! They are pissing off enough people that they’re already losing, and they’re going to keep losing. And once we boot them out, we need to push hard for the laws and the rules that we thought were in place and secure, to really be so.
This is an old fight, and it may never be truly over. But we can come back, do better, learn from our mistakes. And I believe, even now, that we will.
Well said.
Preach.
I agree with everything you said.
I’ll just add that people like Donald Trump live forever because they don’t care about anyone else. (I mean, how great would it be not to feel like you’ve been punched in the gut when you watch a woman being dragged away from her crying children by ICE? How many more minutes are added to your life if you feel no empathy for little ones starving in Gaza? These things take a toll.)
IdlesAtCranky 🎯❣️
What I would like to know is what happened to all the antiques and priceless art works displayed in the East Wing of the White House. Has anyone checked eBay recently?
Did anyone check Mar-a-Lago bathroom or ballroom with the classified documents yet to be returned (and prosecuted)?
90 million people who were ELIGIBLE to vote in the last election didn’t
Millions who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 didn’t vote for his successor last year
Millions of folks over my lifetime didn’t vote in midterm elections when Democratic POTUS were in power allowing the Republicans to DECIMATE a Democratically progressive agenda & settling the stage for the deplorable SCOTUS majority we now have
🇺🇸 has showcased AD NASEUM who & what it is 💔🇺🇸💔
It’s a gut punch to think that our country is probably not going to socially or economically recover from this disaster of a “presidency” in my lifetime.