In a lengthy caption post to Instagram on Monday, former first lady Michelle Obama implored Donald Trump to concede the election and begin a peaceful transfer of power.
Obama reflected on her own struggles accepting Hillary Clinton’s defeat by Trump in the 2016 election.
“I was hurt and disappointed—but the votes had been counted, and Donald Trump had won. The American people had spoken,” she said.
Despite her own disappointment about Trump’s win, both she and her husband were determined to help make the transfer of power as smooth as possible.
“So my husband and I instructed our staff to do what George and Laura Bush had done for us: run a respectful, seamless transition of power—one of the hallmarks of American democracy. We invited the folks from the president-elect’s team into our offices and prepared detailed memos for them, offering what we’d learned over the past eight years”.
“I have to be honest and say that none of this was easy for me. Donald Trump had spread racist lies about my husband that had put my family in danger,” she confessed in the caption. Donald Trump publicly questioned Barack Obama’s citizenship and religious beliefs, pushing the narrative that he was not born in the United States and ineligible to be president.
The process of transferring power has not begun because Trump refuses to acknowledge Joe Biden as the President-elect. Instead, he continues to falsely claim that he won the election “by a lot” and that the Democrats are trying to steal it from him.
In her post, Obama cautioned that delaying the transition process will “put our country’s health and security in danger.”
