During a recent chat with Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama was candid about Americans’ emotional state. Like many Americans following the shocking election of Donald Trump, the first lady argues that many are “feeling what not having hope feels like.”
“We feel the difference now. See, now, we are feeling what not having hope feels like,” she told Winfrey in an interview clip that aired on CBS on Friday, Dec. 18. “Hope is necessary. It’s a necessary concept and Barack didn’t just talk about hope because he thought it was just a nice slogan to get votes.”
“He and I and so many believe that — what else do you have if you don’t have hope,” she added. “What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”
In contrast, Obama voiced her belief that her husband, President Barack Obama, 55, gave “the people” something to believe in when challenges arose — big or small. “I feel Barack has been that for the nation in ways that people will come to appreciate. Having a grown-up in the White House who can say to you in times of crisis and turmoil, ‘Hey, it’s going to be OK. Let’s remember the good things that we have,'” she said.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, Dec, 17, President-elect Donald Trump appeared at a rally in Mobile, Alabama, where he offered up a measured response to Obama’s criticism, saying he assumed “she was talking about the past, not the future.”
“I’m telling you, we have tremendous hope. And we have tremendous promise and tremendous potential. We are going to be so successful as a country again. We are going to be amazing,” said Trump.
“And I actually think she made that statement not meaning it the way it came out. I really do,” he added, noting that Obama “could not have been nicer” in greeting his wife, Melania Trump, at the White House a short month ago.
To our surprise, (likely taking advice to cease his vindictive Twitter rants), Trump again repeated that it was his belief Obama “meant that statement in a different way than it came out.”
In spite of it all, according to a Pew Research Center national survey released in December, more than 1 in 3 — 38 percent — of Americans think Trump will be a “poor or terrible” president.
Catch Obama’s interview in its entirety on CBS on Monday at 8 p.m. EST and again on OWN on Dec. 21 at 9 p.m. EST. Will you be watching? Sound off in the comment section below.
