WASHINGTON, D.C. – For the past four years, former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama have given a sign of what’s to come under the Presidency of Joe Biden. The Obamas lurked in the shadows during the Trump Presidency, throwing barbs and rallying support, but after Wednesday’s debacle at the U.S. Capitol, the Obama’s reinsertion into the national spotlight changed from a supportive role to a husband-wife executive role.
In that role, the Obama’s now are making requests and pushing their political agenda once again, and now, some are actually listening.
The Obamas are now the lead ambassadors of the “Putting America Back Together” movement.
Michelle Obama called the thousands of protesters in Washington D.C. nothing more than gang members lead by President Donald J. Trump.
“Like all of you, I watched as a gang—organized, violent, and mad they’d lost an election—laid siege to the United States Capitol. They set up gallows. They proudly waved the traitorous flag of the Confederacy through the halls. They desecrated the center of American government. And once authorities finally gained control of the situation, these rioters and gang members were led out of the building not in handcuffs, but free to carry on with their days,” Michelle Obama said. “The day was a fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can’t handle the truth of his own failures. And the wreckage lays at the feet of a party and media apparatus that gleefully cheered him on, knowing full well the possibility of consequences like these.”
Obama compared the uprising in Washington, D.C. to the Summer long Black Lives Matter riots which claimed several lives, destroyed cities, and laid siege to small businesses during the height of a global pandemic.
“This summer’s Black Lives Matter protests were an overwhelmingly peaceful movement—our nation’s largest demonstrations ever, bringing together people of every race and class and encouraging millions to re-examine their own assumptions and behavior. And yet, in city after city, day after day, we saw peaceful protestors met with brute force. We saw cracked skulls and mass arrests, law enforcement pepper-spraying its way through a peaceful demonstration for a presidential photo op,” she added.
As cities burned across America, Obama, most likely watched CNN news coverage of the riots which said they were “peaceful” amid a backdrop of a burning city behind the reporter.
“Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday’s riot and this summer’s peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful. It hurts. And I cannot think about moving on or turning the page until we reckon with the reality of what we saw yesterday. True progress will be possible only once we acknowledge that this disconnect exists and take steps to repair it. And that also means coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego,” she added.
“Now is the time for those who voted for this president to see the reality of what they’ve supported—and publicly and forcefully rebuke him and the actions of that mob,” Obama said. “Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior—and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection. And if we have any hope of improving this nation, now is the time for swift and serious consequences for the failure of leadership that led to yesterday’s shame.”
