In the midst of President Trump’s fierce criticism of Rep. Elijah Cummings and Baltimore city officials for letting Baltimore slide into decrepitude, former First Lady Michelle Obama took a shot at Trump, trolling him by tweeting an homage to a Baltimore step-dancing team who pointedly intoned, “When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. When they go low, we go high.” Obama tweeted, “On #NationalDanceDay, I’m shouting out the Lethal Ladies, a Baltimore STEP team who I saw perform back in 2017. I’m so proud of you all—and everyone who’s dancing today!”
CNN hyperventilated, “Michelle Obama is a master in the subtle art of shade.”
After the president slammed the “squad” of Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Obama tweeted, “What truly makes our country great is its diversity. I’ve seen that beauty in so many ways over the years. Whether we are born here or seek refuge here, there’s a place for us all. We must remember it’s not my America or your America. It’s our America.”
CNN referred to the tweets Trump had issued targeting the “squad” as racist. CNN wrote, “Her comment comes after Trump launched days of controversy with a racist attack ….”
Sometimes Michelle Obama is not “a master in the subtle art of shade.” In early July, she ripped the crowd that attended President Trump’s 2017 inauguration, snapping that they were “not reflective of the country.”
Speaking at the Essence Festival in New Orleans with CNN host Gayle King, Michelle Obama stated, “And then we had to meet the Trumps. That day was very emotional and then to sit at that inauguration and to look around at a crowd that was not reflective of the country, and I had to sit in that audience, one of a handful of people of color, and then listen to that speech, all that I had sort of held on to for eight years, watching my husband get raked over the coals, feeling like we had to do everything perfectly, so by the time I got on that plane, it was release of eight years of having to try to show up, as we all know we have to do, not only perfectly but a little bit better than perfect to even be considered equal.”
One month after Trump was elected, Michelle Obama posited that Trump’s election portended hopelessness in America, opining, “We feel the difference now. See, now, we are feeling what not having hope feels like. 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. What do you give your kids if you can’t give them hope?”
The next day, Trump fired back, asserting, “Michelle Obama said yesterday that there’s no hope. But I assume she was talking about the past, not the future… Because 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.”