The former first lady ruled out future campaigning and political speeches, saying she’s focused on personal projects and defining ambition on her own terms.
Former first lady Michelle Obama says she has no plans to return to political life, saying that she will no longer give campaign speeches or campaign for candidates but that she still wants to stay publicly engaged on her own terms.
“I am not going to be in politics. I’m not giving another political speech. I’m not campaigning for another candidate,” she said during an interview on Wildcard, a podcast from NPR, released on June 26. “But I’m here.”
The former first lady made the comments while discussing on the podcast “IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson,” her brother, along with an array of other topics.
She said the show grew out of a desire to stay connected to her family and her late mother’s legacy. Her mother, Marian Robinson, passed away just over a year ago—with the former first lady saying the podcast was a way for her to keep her mother’s memory alive and stay connected with her brother as they took on the mantle of being the elders of the family following the matriarch’s death.
She also said the show was a platform to speak more freely after years of intense scrutiny in the White House—stating that when she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, were in the White House, they believed they were “on a razor thin wire” of the ability to make mistakes as the first African American first family.
She said her time in the White House was like carrying “a tray of all the hopes and expectations” of ancestors and that making mistakes could “mean curtains” for anyone else to follow them.
“This is the period in my life when the stakes are not so high,” Obama said. “Ten years in the public eye—eight years in the White House—where every word, every utterance, every heel on my shoe, every blink of my eye, every fist bump was analyzed, dissected, and broadcast—celebrated in some instances and ridiculed or disparaged in others. So even when you’re an honest, authentic person you’re watchful and mindful because you don’t want to be the one that creates problems for the president of the United States who happens to be your husband.”
By Chase Smith
