SNAP OUT OF THE FOG: Four Minutes with Michelle Obama
Please share this clip from Michelle Obama’s speech from Oct. 26 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with your networks. She gets to the heart of things
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I hear Jason Stanley’s words in my head on heavy rotation from RadPod’s last interview with him… women must lead the charge… it’s a harsh train coming for women’s rights… get women out in front.
As I think of ways in the final days and hours before the US election to motivate the troops, I think of First Lady Michelle Obama’s speech from Saturday night in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and in particular, I think of this four-minute section.
I invite you to listen:
Powerful medicine delivered masterfully.
Here is a transcript from that portion of her speech:
Let us not forget the incompetence and the corruption, the chaos that was the cornerstone of (Trump’s) entire four years in office. Let’s start with the pandemic. Remember how woefully unprepared he was, how he was sowing seeds of fear and confusion, endangering lives with his lies and ignorance, denigrating the doctors and scientists trying to help us. You want to talk about plans?
Well, my husband left him a very detailed pandemic plan. And you know what he did? He ignored it. He had no clue how to get us out of that crisis. No ability to bring back the millions of jobs we lost so suddenly. No idea how to get our students back into school safely. No attempt to help stem the epidemic of loneliness and isolation that too many of our young people are still dealing with. And his failures had real cost.
America lost 7 million more jobs during the COVID downturn than the European Union. Among wealthy nations, the United States had one of the highest COVID death rates. Again, all of this occurred with Trump in charge.
And sadly, this was just the tragic exclamation point on his disastrous presidency. Installing judges and justices who have now stripped away our reproductive freedoms. Cracking down on protesters marching to protect their sons from being shot because of the color of their skin. Rolling back protections for LGBTQ Americans. Fanning conspiracy theories. Unleashing hatred in our communities.
And then, when the American people fired him from a job that was too big for him to begin with, he tried to steal it. Egging on a violent mob that breached our nation’s capital. And when told that his own vice president was in danger, you know what he said? “So what?” So what, y’all? He said, “so what?”
And after all of that, after all of that, and there is more. There are still folks wringing their hands, crossing their arms, tuning out, saying they plan to sit this election out to prove a point. Well, let me tell you who isn’t tuning out. Many of the folks who served closest to Trump and saw the danger firsthand. His former vice president. Almost half of his former cabinet members. The growing list of four-star generals and Republican governors and senators and former House members. All of whom are not publicly supporting his candidacy the second time around. You all hear what I said? They are saying, no, thank you. Many are speaking out.
His chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for example, said, and these are his words, that “Trump is fascist to the core”. His Joint Chief of Staff!
These folks know that nothing this man says or does is funny in any way. So, I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us are choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn. I hope that you’ll forgive me if I’m a little angry that we are indifferent to his erratic behavior, his obvious mental decline, his history as a convicted felon. A known slumlord. A predator found liable for sexual abuse. All of this while we pick apart Kamala’s answers from interviews that he doesn’t even have the courage to do, y’all.
In four invaluable minutes, she sums up what everyone in the country needs to hear, the grotesque double-standard that we have an opportunity to reject and rebuke once and for all.
She leaves everyone with a call to action, as she continues her speech:
I am praying that those of us contemplating voting for Trump or not voting at all will snap out of whatever fog we are in. I am praying that we consider the decades of sacrifice and struggle by all of our ancestors, the folks who marched and sacrificed and shed their blood for us. We have to ask ourselves, is a vote for Trump or no vote at all the way we honor their lives? And if that’s the case, well that surely doesn’t sound like freedom to me.
Join me in encouraging everyone you can reach over the next few days to follow First Lady Michelle Obama’s advice to “turn the page on the ugliness once and for all.”
America, the world is watching.
Let’s put a woman in charge.
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Begin each day with a grateful heart.
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Screengrab, go.kamalaharris.com.