The Hill: “Longtime allies of the former first lady say she is sending a powerful statement by skipping the event.”
“They say she wants nothing to do with a man undeserving of the presidency and is making no effort to hide her disdain for Trump.”
Said one ally: “She meant every word she said on the campaign trail with every fiber of her being. And she’s no hypocrite.”
Barack Obama called out divisiveness and polarization as “one of the greatest challenges of our time,” as he avoided any specific political references in his first public remarks since the election, Politico reports.
Obama didn’t utter the names of Donald Trump or Kamala Harris and stayed away from politics.
Barack Obama put out his summer reading list and playlist.
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Marian Robinson, the mother of former first lady Michelle Obama, has died, the family said in a statement Friday.
She was 86.
Former president Barack Obama told David Axelrod that the rise of Donald Trump was related to the fears of having the first African-American president.
Said Obama: “I think it’s fair to say that something like the Tea Party does not get the traction, generate the heat that it does had it not been for the fact that I represented something that looked like something very foreign to some people and scary.”
He added: “I think if you tracked Fox News coverage all the way up through Tucker Carlson talking about, white people are all being replaced and that Democrats are deliberately trying to bring in illegal immigrants and then give them voting rights and welfare checks to buy them off and build a Democratic majority. I think that argument probably gets less traction if it wasn’t me who was president at the time.”
“Former first lady Michelle Obama, who campaigned for children’s health and fitness during her time in the White House, is co-founding a company selling food and drinks intended to be healthier for kids than what is typically on store shelves,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
“Michelle Obama broke down shortly after leaving then-President Donald Trump’s inauguration, the former first lady candidly shared in a new podcast, as the emotions of leaving their family’s home after eight years and resentment over Trump taking office overwhelmed her,” CNN reports.
Said Obama: “When those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight, uncontrollable sobbing, because that’s how much we were holding it together for eight years.”
The offices of former Presidents Obama and Clinton say they turned over all classified materials to the National Archives at the end of their presidencies, The Hill reports.
Michelle Obama writes in her new book that she “overcame a teleprompter mishap during her first major live televised speech at the 2008 Democratic National Convention,” Insider reports.
Write Obama: “I was standing there on live television, knowing I was supposed to speak for 16 minutes straight. There was no pausing the show or calling for help. For a second, I felt wildly alone — and also wildly exposed.”
“Luckily, Obama was prepared. She had spent weeks rehearsing the speech until she had it completely memorized.”
Michelle Obama told the BBC that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential election win “still hurts” and even made her question her husband’s legacy.
Said Obama: “When I’m in my darkest moment, right, my most irrational place, I could say: ‘Well maybe not, maybe we weren’t good enough.’”
“A noose was found at the construction site of the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago — a startling discovery that caused construction to pause on former President Barack Obama’s $830-million legacy project,” USA Today reports.
“Obama is the sole party leader able to draw major base-motivating crowds without simultaneously angering the other side,” the Washington Post reports.
“Barack Obama is trying to do something he couldn’t during two terms as president: help Democrats succeed in national midterm elections when they already hold the White House,” the AP reports.
“Of course, he’s more popular than he was back then, and now it’s President Joe Biden, Obama’s former vice president, who faces the prospects of a November rebuke.”
“Obama begins a hopscotch across battleground states Friday in Georgia, and he will travel Saturday to Michigan and Wisconsin, followed by stops next week in Nevada and Pennsylvania.”
Barack Obama is part of a group of investors looking to buy the Phoenix Suns basketball team, according to the Bleacher Report.
“Barack Obama told reporters in his last days as president that he wasn’t worried about a single Donald Trump term, but was concerned about a ‘sustained period’ of political norms being undermined if he served two terms,” according to newly released documents obtained by Bloomberg News.
“Obama met with reporters three days before Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 17, 2017, for an off-the-record conversation. A White House transcript of the meeting — which was never reported under the ground rules agreed upon by the journalists — was included in a cache of documents released by the Justice Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.”
“So for me, this day is not just about what has happened. It’s also about what could happen. Because a girl like me, she was never supposed to be up there next to Jacqueline Kennedy and Dolley Madison. She was never supposed to live in this house, and she definitely wasn’t supposed to serve as first lady.”
— Michelle Obama, quoted by the Los Angeles Times, at the unveiling of her White House portrait.
President Biden and First Lady Jill Biden welcomed back Barack Obama and Michelle Obama for the formal unveiling of their White House portraits.
Barack Obama says the artist who painted Michelle captured her “grace, her intelligence — and the fact that she’s fine.”
He then joked that the artist who painted his portrait “talked me out of wearing a tan suit.”
Barack Obama won the best narrator Emmy for his work on the Netflix documentary series, “Our Great National Parks,” the AP reports.
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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