‘You Cannot Fake Your Way Through The Job’: Michelle Obama Takes Direct Aim At Trump In DNC Speech

TOPLINE

In a passionate speech to close off the first night of the Democratic National Convention, former first lady Michelle Obama made a direct appeal for Americans to vote for Joe Biden “like our lives depend on it” as she blasted President Donald Trump’s leadership and asserted: “He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head.”

KEY FACTS

Big number

26 million viewers tuned in to watch the first night of 2016’s convention in Philadelphia. It is yet to be revealed how many watched this year’s opening night. 

What to watch for

Trump’s reaction to Obama’s remarks. Trump has previously hit back after Michelle wrote in her memoir that she would “never forgive him for putting our family in danger” with his support for the baseless conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya. 

Key background

Monday marked Michelle Obama’s fourth DNC speech, and symbolically, she echoed the now famous line she made in her 2016 speech: “When they go low, we go high”. This time around, the phrase was imbued with more urgency as she explicitly acknowledged a nation “deeply divided”. “Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences,” she said on Monday. As the New York Times notes, Michelle Obama’s repeated billing at the convention reflects her standing as America’s most admired woman, according to the most recent Gallup poll. 

Tangent

Obama last week revealed in her podcast that she was suffering from a “low grade depression” in response to a spate of high-profile deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police officers, and the pandemic. “We are living through something that no one in our lifetimes has lived through,” she said.

Further reading

Full Michelle Obama D.N.C. Speech Transcript (New York Times)