5 Times Michelle Obama Has Thrown Shade At Donald Trump

During his presidency, Donald Trump tweeted about former President Barack Obama nearly 250 times, and former First Lady Michelle Obama wasn't immune to his rants either. In November 2018, The Washington Post shared a snippet of her memoir "Becoming," where she discussed how Donald's misinformation about her family greatly impacted their sense of security. A day after the passage's release, Donald responded, "She got paid a lot of money to write a book, and they always expect a little controversy" (via CNN).

Although Donald isn't a big fan of Michelle, his wife, former First Lady Melania Trump, might see her as somewhat of an inspiration. When Melania took the stage at the 2016 Republican National Convention, she delivered a well-loved speech. However, social media users later noticed that some of the speech's passages sounded a little too familiar. Many quickly realized that Michelle delivered a similarly worded address at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.

Donald's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, claimed that they hadn't plagiarised the speech and wrote the claim off as another one of then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's attempts to take down a strong woman like Melania. Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr. told ABC's "World News Tonight" that they wouldn't issue a formal apology because the opposition was making mountains out of molehills. While the Obamas are vocal critics of Donald, they don't resort to temper tantrums and hate speech to get their point across. Michelle, in particular, knows how to communicate her dislike with subtle but effective jabs.

During a 2023 episode of her "The Light Podcast," Michelle Obama shared that the Obama family was going through a tough time on the day of Trump's inauguration in 2017. She recalled that emotions were running high because they had to leave their home of eight years behind. Without name-dropping Trump, Obama explained how their day only got worse as he gave his inauguration speech, "But then 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."

In her memoir "Becoming," she wrote, "Someone from Barack's administration might have said that the optics there were bad, that what the public saw didn't reflect the President's reality or ideals, but in this case, maybe it did." So, she let her displeasure show unabashedly across her face. Obama and Trump also had vastly different memories of his inauguration. During his speech, Trump noted that over one million people came out to watch him speak.

But in her podcast, Obama said he may been a bit too generous with that claim because she saw the number of people gathered there from a first-hand perspective. Like many of us, the former First Lady has a long list of people she would rather see take on the presidency, and she knew a great candidate who was close to her heart.

When Michelle Obama sat down for a chat with Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America" in 2018, she made a subtle jab at Donald Trump's 2020 candidacy. After Roberts asked for her thoughts about Hillary Clinton vying for the presidency, she seemed pleased because it would bring some competition for Trump. "I think, at this point, everybody's qualified, and everybody should run," she said.

Obama joked that she wasn't opposed to her then-17-year-old daughter, Sasha, trying to clinch the presidency. On a more serious note, Obama said she would love to see more impassioned candidates in the presidential race. As you can imagine, she wasn't thrilled when Trump decided to run in the 2024 elections, and to make matters worse, he remained a promising candidate for one of the most important jobs in the world despite having four indictments. Speaking on Jay Shetty's "On Purpose" podcast, the former First Lady expressed she was extremely tense about their country's future.

Obama believed many people didn't comprehend the power of their vote because they thought the government wouldn't work in their best interests regardless of who they selected. But she wanted these people to know their leadership did more for them than they believed. She also touched on the double standards in politics without mentioning Trump by name, "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."

On several occasions, Donald Trump has falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama wasn't born on U.S. soil. Michelle Obama addressed these lies in her speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in the context of how she raised her daughters, Malia and Sasha Obama, to look past people who publicly brought up such bizarre rumors. She added that they ensured their kids knew that the hate speech they frequently witnessed on television wasn't an accurate representation of the country they loved so dearly.

She concluded the topic beautifully, saying, "We explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don't stoop to their level — no, our motto is, when they go low, we go high." A few months after the address, The Washington Post shared an audio recording of Trump bragging about how he inappropriately touched women and kissed them without their consent.

The former First Lady got visibly emotional as she addressed the topic during a speech, saying, "This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn't matter what party you belong to." She expressed the comments unsettled her on a deeply personal level. Back then, Trump wrote off his disgusting recording as "locker room talk." Michelle clapped back at this so-called explanation by noting that no man in her life would speak about a woman in such a derogatory manner under any circumstances.

Michelle Obama had some strong words for Donald Trump after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. She took to X, formerly Twitter, to call him out by referencing his actions, not his name. "Let's remember that tens of millions of people voted for the status quo, even when it meant supporting lies, hate, chaos, and division," she wrote. She encouraged her supporters to find common ground with the opposition because it could enable them to see eye-to-eye on serious matters.

Although she couldn't be happier about Biden's win, she knew they had a long road ahead because they had to fight off misinformation to ensure that nobody like Trump would ever set foot in the office again. Thankfully, Obama wasn't quite done with her subtle jabs at Trump after his presidency drew to a close. When she appeared on the "Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon" in 2023, the host asked if she had walked the White House halls again after she left.

The beloved First Lady cheekily replied that she hadn't been able to visit their former home because nobody had called them over. Obama elaborated that the Trumps had failed to follow the long-standing tradition of inviting the previous presidential family over to hang their official portraits. As a result, the Obamas' official portrait unveiling ceremony only took place in 2022, with Biden doing the honors.

When Michelle Obama spoke at the Obama Summit in 2017, she shared a piece of wisdom that didn't directly address Donald Trump, but everyone knew exactly who she was talking about. "You don't just say what's on your mind. You don't tweet every thought," she continued amidst cheers. "Most of your initial thoughts are not worthy of the light of day." Although Obama stressed that she wasn't pointing fingers at anyone in particular, it certainly seemed like a dig at Trump's incessant tweeting.

She also used his beloved social media platform to throw shade at him. In 2017, the former President took to X to criticize Baltimore Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings by calling his district a "disgusting, rat and rodent-infested mess." Obama wasn't too pleased about his comments, but instead of getting into an online argument with him, she took the opportunity to praise Baltimore-based step group Lethal Ladies for National Dance Day through a sweet tweet.

She also shared a video of the talented dance group performing to her slogan, "When they go low, we go high." Although Obama has mastered the art of subtle shading, she also knows how to use her voice to improve the state of things. After the Capitol attack of January 2021, Obama took to X to ask social media platforms to permanently ban Trump from their websites so he wouldn't be able to create another terrifying situation like the attack through his misinformation and hate.