Steven Bartlett asked Michelle Obama why she chose to skip Donald Trump’s inauguration this year, and she gave a very clear response.
The former first lady of the United States was conspicuously absent from Trump’s event on January 20, 2025.
Her husband, Barack Obama, attended, as did former Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Joe Biden.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who ran against Trump in the 2024 election, also went, although Michelle was nowhere to be found.
No reason was given as to why Michelle decided to skip the event, leading to rumours suggesting possible reasons behind her absence, such as alleged marital issues – which she has denied.
However, this could not have been farther from the truth.
During an interview with on The Diary of a CEO, Bartlett asked directly why she skipped Trump’s second inauguration and ‘take back control’.
She said: “What do I wanna do in this moment as a box checking – a person who has been box checking her whole life, doing the right thing, trying to always be an example, always going high . I think now I earned ‘how do I feel?’
“Do I want to upend my life and take this trip and leave my peace and my children for this? I didn’t have to and that was my choice.
“I would have never made that choice. I would have always done what I thought was the right thing to do for other people to set an example, and I think I just told myself, ‘I think I’ve done enough of that’.”
Obama didn’t attend Trump’s inauguration not long after she missed Jimmy Carter’s funeral, where she would have been seated beside Trump.
She attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017, which only seemed to add even more criticism this when she didn’t attend this time around.
Canadian businessman Kevin O’Leary commented on Fox News earlier this year that he thinks the former her behaviour is ‘wrong’.
“This tradition has gone on for over 100 years … You have to respect it. I don’t like what she’s doing here. I’m against it. I think it’s wrong,” he said about Michelle missing the inauguration on January 20.
In April Obama gave another answer explaining her absence, saying she stepped back from public events because ‘the choice that was right for me’.
