A longstanding fever dream among Republicans and Democrats alike is that Michelle Obama is going to replace Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president. While completely absurd, the notion has nevertheless so persisted that the former first lady’s office had to officially throw cold water on it in March, saying, “As former first lady Michelle Obama has expressed several times over the years, she will not be running for president.” And apparently, she’s long made it clear at home that going into politics is a terrible idea.
Speaking at a fundraiser for Joe Biden on Saturday, Barack Obama was asked if his daughters would ever get involved in the political world, to which he responded, “That is a question I do not need to answer because Michelle drilled into them so early that you would be crazy to go into politics. It will never happen.”
Of course, that wasn’t the only thing the former president had to tell the crowd gathered in Los Angeles. He noted the insanity of the fact that Donald Trump, a convicted felon, has a real shot of regaining the White House come November. “Look, part of what has happened in the last several years is we’ve normalized behavior that used to be disqualified,” Obama said. “The other spectacle of the nominee of one of the two major parties is sitting in court and being convicted by a jury of his peers on 34 counts. You have his foundation, it’s not allowed to operate because it was engaging in monkey business and not actually philanthropic. You had this organization being prosecuted for not paying taxes.… There was a time when we had certain core values that we agreed with. We believed in basic honesty. We believed in paying your taxes. We believed in making sure that we didn’t make fun of [prisoners of war], that we did not try to politicize our military, that we respected the ballot.”
Obama’s comments regarding Trump came just days before Team Biden launched a $50 million ad campaign zeroing in on Trump’s criminal conviction, and the fact that he could be subsequently convicted for other crimes he’s been charged with, including in Georgia where he was indicted last year with trying to overturn the state’s election results. As Axios notes, the ad “uses scenes of Trump in court—and his mug shot from his criminal case in Georgia…to help frame the race ahead of the Biden-Trump debate on June 27.” As black-and-white images of Trump are seen onscreen, a narrator tells viewers, “In the courtroom, we see Donald Trump for who he is. He’s been convicted of 34 felonies and found liable for sexual assault…Meanwhile, Joe Biden has been working.”
In a statement, Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler told Axios, “Trump approaches the first debate as a convicted felon who continues to prove that he will do anything and harm anyone if it means more power and vengeance for Donald Trump.” Speaking of vengeance, at the Saturday fundraiser, Biden told the group, “What he did on January 6th, and now he’s literally saying if he doesn’t win there’ll be a bloodbath. It’s outrageous—what he’s talking about is outrageous.” He later added: “The idea that he’s actually threatened retribution. This is the United States of America. Did you ever think you’d ever, ever, ever hear anything like this?”
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