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Michelle Obama Speaks Out Against Donald Trump Without Even Saying His Name


Michelle Obama usually avoids explicitly calling out Donald Trump, but she’s found subtler ways to make her opinion clear. During a conversation with Shonda Rhimes at the Pennsylvania Conference for Women on Tuesday, she got in a sharp jab at Trump without even naming him.

“Many of the young people today, they only know Barack Obama as their president and what that standard felt like and what kind of messages were being talked about,” she said. “They grew up only under hope and possibility and options and opportunity and creating more space. … I think they will feel some of what’s happening now as intrinsically not what they were taught.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that Trump has shaped the next generation’s worldview. In fact, she thinks young people have the potential to change things. “They are more open, in ways,” she said. “I think they are less tolerant of obvious inequities. I think that this generation will look at what is happening now in the world and they will say, ‘This doesn’t feel right because this wasn’t what I was taught.'”

But she didn’t just take aim at Trump. One source of the problem, she said, is a lack of diversity in Congress, especially among Republicans. “It’s a feeling of color, almost,” she said. “On one side of the room, it’s literally gray and white, literally, that’s the color palette on one side of the room. On the other side of the room, there’s yellows and blues and whites and greens. Physically, there’s a difference in color in the tone. Because one side, all men, all white. On the other side, some women, some people of color.”

In order to get a more diverse, forward-thinking group of people into politics, the Obama Presidential Center will support the development of young leaders, particularly women, she added.

Obama most famously called out Trump without naming him at the Democratic National Convention last year, where she explained how she teaches her daughters to process what’s happening in the news. “How we urge them to ignore those who question their father’s citizenship or faith,” she said. “How we insist that this hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country. How we explain that when someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: when they go low, we go high.”



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