Michelle Obama open himself about his decision to miss President Donald Trump The second inauguration earlier this year.
The former First Lady was mainly absent from the January 20 ceremony and also missed the funeral of former President Jimmy Carter one and a half weeks earlier on January 9, where he would sit next to Trump.
In episode April 23 the podcast “Imo with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson“The host of Obama with his brother, he pondered his absence during an honest conversation with guests Taraji P. Henson.
“My decision to miss the inauguration – you know what people or my decision is not realized to make a choice earlier this year that is suitable for me, greeted with ridicule and criticism like that,” he said.
“People do not believe that I say not for other reasons, they must assume that my marriage is a mess,” he continued. “While I’m here really trying to have my life and deliberately practice making the right choice for me.”
Michelle Obama spoke on stage during the IMO Live Podcast 2025 SXSW Conference and Festival at the Austin Convention Center, on March 13, 2025, in Austin, Texas.
Image marcus ingram/getty, file
He added, “It takes all my power not to do things that are considered right, but do things [were] For me – that is a difficult thing for me to do. “
To help him follow up, Obama admitted that he must “basically deceive” himself by refusing to prepare for the event.
“It starts with not having anything to use,” he said. “I mean, I have been firmly -because I am always ready for any funeral, whatever. I walk with the right dress, I travel in clothes to stand guard if there is something that appears. So I like, if I won’t do this, I have to tell my team, I don’t even want to have a ready dress.”
“Because it’s very easy to say, ‘Let me do the right thing,'” he added.
In January 20, 2017, photo files, First Lady Michelle Obama greeted the elected president Donald Trump when they arrived for the beginning of the seizure ceremony in front of the Capitol in Washington, DC
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images, File
The former First Lady also shared a part of her motivation was to set an example for her daughter Malia Obama, 26, and Sasha Obama, 23, which she shared with her husband, ex President Barack Obama.
“I want them to start training now the art of saying ‘no,'” he said. “Because I see it in it, fun, excellent, do not want to accept anything just like that, always show gratitude, feel like they are enough now, right? This is exercise. This is the muscle you have to build, because if you don’t continue to build it, you don’t develop it.”
Obama previously spoke of his mindset shift earlier this month during the “work in progress” podcast episode with Sophia Bush, where he emphasized how Women are often criticized to prioritize their own needs.
“In such a way that this year, people – they could not even understand that I made the choice for myself, that they must assume that my husband and I divorced,” he said at the time.
“This is not an adult woman just making a series of decisions for herself, right? But that’s what the community did to us. We actually started in the end, ‘What did I do? For whom I did this?'” He continued. “And if it does not match the kind of stereotype from what people think we have to do, then it is labeled as something negative and terrible.”
He added, “I feel it’s time for me to make some big girl decisions about my life and have it completely.”