Former first lady Michelle Obama warned against lecturing voters who supported President Donald Trump during a podcast interview on Sunday, and described their support for the president as an “act” of not knowing what else to do.
Host of the “Talk Easy” podcast Sam Fragoso asked if her opinion of the country changed after Trump was elected in 2016 and again in 2024.
Obama said she obviously felt disappointed by it, but that the outcome had to do with people’s pain and where they are in their lives. The former first lady said people struggling with healthcare as well as the high cost of living made them more susceptible to finding someone to blame.
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“And that’s true that anger, you know, I can’t look some people in the face and tell them you have no right to be angry or to do something that maybe is against your own interest,” she said. “That’s what — that’s human nature. Many of the people who voted for my husband twice — twice! And I know that that’s how they feel. It’s like, this isn’t about anything other than just, we need something different.”
Obama continued, “So, you can’t just pigeonhole them and say you just don’t care, and you’re racist or whatever you’re thinking. This is an act of ‘I don’t know what else to do.'”
“I just wish we had more leaders that were figuring out how to do more for the middle class, for the working folks, because those are the folks who are drowning in this economy,” she added. “It’s not me anymore, but I know those folks, and they’re good people, and they don’t have a way out and that makes for bad choices.”
Earlier in the conversation, Obama said the U.S. hasn’t “completed the assignment of actualizing this democracy.”
Obama said in April that America was going through its “janky” era.
“Well, that’s the 2.0 of life and when we talk about, how do you feel about the country? You know, there are versions of the country that happen, right? And the new version doesn’t make the old one bad. It’s necessary for growth. And I think we’re in just a janky version,” Obama said during an interview on her “IMO” podcast.
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She said with each version of America, the country learned something about itself, before pointing to the ICE shootings in Minnesota and the community’s response.
“But with each, you know, with each version, we learned something about ourselves as a country,” Obama said. “And you know I’m, right now I’m kind of digging the way folks are beginning to respond, right? I mean, Minnesota, powerful stuff. I mean it was a powerful reminder of what a community of people can do and are willing to do to protect one another.”
She argued that when the country isn’t as “janky,” it doesn’t have to prove it.
