After she left the White House for the last official time, beloved dignitary Michelle Obama admits that she suddenly burst into tears and could not stop crying for an entire half hour.
The reason is simple and easy to understand: Barack and Michelle Obama’s polar opposite was taking the helm of the Oval Office – a demagogue who ruthlessly and relentlessly trafficked in racial politics to win the election and who fiendishly promoted the corrosive “birther” theory about the 44th president.
In an interview with “The Light Podcast,” Obama is promoting her third consecutive New York Times bestseller, The Light We Carry where she reflects on how she’s dealt with relationships, self-doubt and anxiety during uncertain times.
After leaving what had essentially become the family home, the White House, the new reality hit her hard and tears streamed down her cheeks after Trump’s inauguration.
“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,” Obama said, referring to her final trip aboard the Air Force One, presidential airplane.
Obama admits that she was not in a “good mood” whatsoever because of what she saw with the Trump crew, but she felt she “had to hold it together.”
“There were tears, there was that emotion. But then to sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display – there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage, there was no reflection of the broader sense of America,” Obama said.
Obama, 59, is speaking as part of her national tour to promote The Light We Carry where she has involved all-star moderators including Oprah Winfrey, Tyler Perry, David Letterman and Conan O’Brien.
“After the inauguration – and we know whose inauguration we were at – that day was so emotional for so many different reasons. We were leaving the home we had been in for eight years, the only home our kids really knew,” Obama shared. “They remembered Chicago, but they had spent more time in the White House than anywhere. So, we were saying goodbye to the staff and all the people who helped to raise them.”
During the podcast, Obama poked fun at the Trump inauguration in which he famously claimed that he had the largest crowd ever, which was far from the truth.
“You take your last flight off, flying over the Capitol … there weren’t that many people there. We saw it,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience.
