First lady Michelle Obama said that the 2016 election was “painful” to watch in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that aired Monday night on CBS, THE HILL reports.
“You know, this past election was challenging for me as a citizen. To watch and experience. It was painful,” Obama told Winfrey.
Asked whether she’ll ever run for office, a question she’s faced repeatedly, she again said no. “People don’t really understand how hard this is,” she told CBS.
Obama’s demeanor was relaxed throughout the conversation, which aired Monday night on CBS but was taped last week in the family’s private residence before the Obamas left for their annual vacation in Hawaii.
The women are friends, and Winfrey is a political supporter of President Barack Obama.
When Winfrey asked whether Michelle Obama thought her husband’s administration achieved the “hope” that it “was all about,” the first lady said she did – and then drew a contrast with his successor.
“Yes, I do. Because we feel the difference now,” she said, referring to the election results which will put Republican Donald Trump in the White House. “See, now we are feeling what not having hope feels like, you know. Hope is necessary. It is a necessary concept. What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”
The president-elect responded to an early excerpt of first lady’s assessment at a rally he held Saturday in Alabama. “Michelle Obama said yesterday that there’s no hope,” Trump told the crowd, which booed. “But I assume she was talking about the past, not the future.”
The first lady campaigned vigorously against Trump this fall and has said she stands by all that she said about him.
Still, Obama said that she and her husband are doing what they can to help smooth a path for the next administration. She met with future first lady Melania Trump following the election.
“My offer to Melania was, you really don’t know what you don’t know until you’re here, so the door is open, as I’ve told her and as Laura Bush told me and other first ladies told me,” Obama said. “We will do whatever they need to help them succeed.”
Winfrey probed Obama gently and relatively little of the conversation focused on politics. She did ask Obama what it felt like to be called an “angry black woman” by her critics.
“That was one of those things where you just sort of think, ‘Dang, you don’t even know me,’ ” Obama said. “You just sort of feel like, ‘Wow, where’d that come from?’. . . But then you sort of think, ‘This isn’t about me.’ This is about the person or people who write it, you know? That’s just the truth.”
Obama continued: “We’re so afraid of each other . . . Color, wealth, these things that don’t really matter still play too much of a role in how we see one another. And it’s sad, because the thing that least defines us is the color of our skin. It’s the size of our bank account. None of that matters.”
The friendship that has developed between the two globally famous women was clear during many points of the interview. The former talk show host endorsed Barack Obama’s candidacy for president, campaigned for him and became a family insider.
Winfrey asked Obama about the challenges of parenting her daughters in the White House: “Were there moments where you thought they might be broken?”
“I was really just cautiously making sure that they felt normal” Obama said. “They felt good. … Imagine being 18 and you’ve got at least eight men with guns driving you around, walking in your parties. There were those kinds of issues.”
Winfrey interviewed Michelle Obama soon after her family moved to Washington in 2009 for her “O Magazine.” They also sat down together in January 2005, soon after Barack Obama was elected to the U.S. Senate and during the height of Winfrey’s eponymous talk show.
In that first interview, the first lady dished about how the future commander-in-chief was “absolutely the messiest person in the household . . . You had dirty clothes on top of the basket this morning. And I’m just like, ‘There’s a basket with a lid. Lift it up. Put it in.’ ”
The outgoing president made a cameo during the interview to praise his wife’s performance as first lady. “The way she blended purpose with policy and fun was masterful,” he said.
(c) 2016, The Washington Post · Krissah Thompson
Well, Michelle, the last eight years have been very painful for us as well. Don’t let the door hit you on your way out.
Maybe Obama Care will pay for her Therapy
Trust me it was harder for me toto watch her rotten bigoted racist husband be the president who talks a good game and accomplishes nothing and make people lives harder and you selfish first lady who needs to fly on a separate claim to take your house in vacation two hours earlier than your husband at our expense
We can’t all be blessed with the brilliant minds to graduate from school and retain all the physics, chemistry, history, calculus and foreign languages we studied.
But every successful kindergarten graduate learns how not to be a sore loser.
If anything, the interview proves that our educational system requires a major upgrade.
And it is with the biggest hope that she is going away
Wow I’m pleasently surprised. I never imagined that she can feel for the”people”. But now it seems that indeed she does know what we all felt like 8 years ago & then again 4 years ago. The pain indeed wad very hard.
Wow, after all these years, she is still such an ingrate. She claimed that she was never proud of this country until her husband stole the election. Now as she finally leaves, she is angry again?! America was bad to her?! All those white folks who voted for her husband are now bad people? When you look in the dictionary of what gold-digger means, you will see a picture of Michelle Obama’s frowning face looking back at you. What a complainer. I can’t imagine how Barry puts up with that lady. She is much worse than being married to Hillary. I truly hope that Michelle Obama will disappear from our lives and will use all alone. Go make your millions.
Better Mrs. Obama suffer pain than the entire country go down the tubes, which would have been the case had Hillary won.
Your husband gave us no hope for a better future…and left us wanting…u kidding me? That’s why you are out and HE is in!
now you know what it feels to be homeless. question: you once remarked how awful it was to wake up each morning in qa house that was built by slaves. so how come you worked so hard to get to live there? twice?
No, we don’t know Michelle personally, so we have to judge her and form our impressions of her from what we hear her say or watch her do, and that is why so many of us consider her to be an angry and ungrateful. It is NOT “about the person or people who write it, you know”–it’s about her not giving us reason to think otherwise.
Poor lady she really means well…