Michelle Obama Had One of the DNC’s Best Takedowns of Trump

Donald Trump’s dislike for Vice-President Kamala Harris and former First Lady Michelle Obama is nothing new or secret. Over the past month, his refusal to debate Harris and his supporters’ seeming obsession with Obama has led to the conclusion among Democrats that he’s simply afraid of the two women. And on Tuesday night, Obama took the Democratic National Convention stage and showed exactly why Harris’s campaign and supporters should scare him.

In a rousing 20-minute speech, she talked about Harris’s qualifications for the top job, opened up about the loss of her mother, and didn’t pull any punches when it came to addressing the former president.

“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” she said, seemingly referring to his years of spreading racist rumors about former president Obama’s birthplace and his insistence that a “deep state” of Obama loyalists were undermining his presidency. “See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black. I want to know — I want to know — who’s going to tell him, who’s going to tell him, that the job he is currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”

That last quip was a callback to Trump’s claim earlier this summer that immigrants are taking away “Black jobs,” and with it, Obama reminded Americans that the presidency has been — and with Harris, could once again be — a “Black job.”

Obama also shared that she wasn’t sure if she’d even be able to give a speech this year, as she’s been grieving her mother, who died in May. But she said she ultimately decided to speak out of a sense of duty. After all, she consistently ranks as the most popular Democrat — and one of the most popular political figures in either party — and her words carry a lot of weight with voters. If you were wondering who could possibly have followed her speech, it was her husband, who began by saying what everyone was thinking: “I am the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.”

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