Donald Trump's Campaign Amid Indictments Doesn't Seem To Sit Well With Michelle Obama

Although several former U.S. presidents have faced controversies during their tenure, none have been formally indicted on criminal charges. But that streak swiftly ended with former president and 2024 presidential hopeful Donald Trump after he faced four indictments in 2023 alone. His first charge in March 2023 alleged that he paid adult film star Stormy Daniels $130,000 in October 2016 to prevent her from going public with their affair and tainting his reputation during the presidential election that year.

When most presidents leave the White House, they only take their memories and a sense of pride in knowing they made a difference to their country. However, according to Trump's June 2023 indictment, he took home highly classified documents, and 300 of them were recovered at his Mar-a-Lago resort. His third indictment accused him of attempting to delay President Joe Biden's entry into the White House by spreading misinformation about his victory, which snowballed into the January 2021 capitol attack.

The final charge accused him of trying to undermine Biden's 2020 victory in some states to put himself back in the presidential race. Trump pleaded not guilty to all four counts. Like many of us, former First Lady Michelle Obama couldn't fathom how Trump was a front-runner for the 2024 presidency given the controversy surrounding him. She made her disdain known without saying his name during Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcast, saying, "The bars are different for people in life. That I've learned. Other people can be indicted a bunch of times and still run for office. Black men can't. You just learn to be good. And in the end, you benefit from that extra resilience."

Donald Trump and Michelle Obama have vastly different memories of his inauguration. The former president claimed that he felt empowered as he delivered a speech to over a million people who showed up to hear his words, but the real number was believed to have been far lower. In her "Michelle Obama: The Light" podcast, the former First Lady noted that it was an emotional day because they had to leave their home behind, and Trump's victory speech only made matters worse. 

"To sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display — there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage, there was no reflection of the broader sense of America," she recalled. So, it's no surprise that Obama also recalled sobbing after Trump's presidential inauguration. However, she tried to prevent history from repeating itself. 

In a 2020 video shared by Vice, she explained how Trump had divided the country with his hate, worsened the economy because of his poor handling of the pandemic, and increased safety concerns for people of color. Even when Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Obama took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to explain that although she felt overjoyed about his win, she understood their battle was far from over. As she wrote, "Let's remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division."