Former first lady Michelle Obama said in an interview with ABC News Sunday that she “stopped even trying to smile” during the Trump inauguration. She also wondered in her new book why so many women rejected “an exceptionally qualified female candidate and instead choose a misogynist as their president.”
In her book Becoming, Mrs. Obama recalled watching her husband step aside for Trump at the latter’s inauguration. “The vibrant diversity of the two previous inaugurations was gone… Someone from Barack’s administration might have said that the optics were bad—that what the public saw didn’t reflect the president’s reality or ideals. But in this case, maybe it did. Realizing it, I made my own optic adjustment. I stopped even trying to smile.”