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Former First Lady Michelle Obama is skipping Donald Trump’s inauguration next week because she doesn’t want to “plaster” on a smile for someone she fundamentally believes is a threat to American democracy, according to a report.
It was confirmed this week that the former first lady would not be attending the president-elect’s swearing-in but her office did not give any further explanation in a brief statement.
Speculation about her absence has been rife since the announcement and now a source close to Obama has shared the real reason, according to PEOPLE.
“There’s no overstating her feelings about [Trump]. She’s not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake,” the source reportedly told the outlet. “Michelle doesn’t do anything because it’s expected or it’s protocol or it’s tradition.”
Trump has regularly insulted and attacked the Obama family, referring to the former president as “Barack Hussein Obama,” and his comments about people of color have “contributed to Michelle’s opinion of him.”
“She would be expected to swallow her feelings in the spotlight if she attended his second inauguration,” the outlet reported.
Obama, who served as first lady from 2008 to 2016, “doesn’t feel the need to be a public figure anymore,” according to PEOPLE’s source.
Her husband Barack Obama and former presidents Bill Clinton and George W Bush will be at Trump’s inauguration.
After snubbing President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021, Trump became the first president to refuse to attend a successor’s swearing-in since 1869.
Obama attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 and later shared the difficulty of sitting in the audience as he was sworn in.
“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,” she said on her show The Light Podcast in 2023. “There was no reflection of the broader sense of America. Many people took pictures of me and they’re like, you weren’t in a good mood. No, I was not.”
Obama went on to say that she cried for half an hour following the ceremony “because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years without really being able to show it all.”
The former first lady also missed Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week due to a “scheduling conflict.” Her husband and Trump were seen sharing a laugh and engaging in polite conversation during the service.
“It did look very friendly, I must say. I didn’t realize how friendly it looked. I saw it on your wonderful network just a little while ago before I came in,” Trump told a reporter afterward. “And I said, ‘Boy, they look like two people who like each other.’”
“We probably do [like each other],” Trump added.
