Maybe More Democrats Should Skip the Inauguration

Michelle Obama will be skipping Monday's inauguration, which seems like a pretty normal response when a guy whose policies you’ve warned are killing women then wins the presidency.

By Kylie Cheung | January 15, 2025 | 9:57am

Photo: Getty Images Politics

Maybe More Democrats Should Skip the Inauguration

Monday is Inauguration Day, and I am feeling perfectly normal and OK about the beginning of four more years of President Donald Trump, thank you very much! As news trickles in about who is and isn’t attending, on Tuesday, the Office of Barack and Michelle Obama shared that Michelle will not be.

“Former President Barack Obama is confirmed to attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies. Former First Lady Michelle Obama will not attend the upcoming inauguration,” the straightforward statement says. The office hasn’t commented on why Michelle will be absent, and they really don’t have to. I think it’s clear she doesn’t want to hear Carrie Underwood sing.

Most Popular

Michelle was also absent for Jimmy Carter’s funeral last week—which Barack and the other former ex-presidents and their spouses attended—and there’s some speculation that this is because Michelle would have been seated next to Trump.

Nonetheless, Barack felt the need to put out the standard, feel-good statement on the beauty of bipartisanship and American democracy—a flawless system of government that just handed us on a silver platter back to a man who’s joked that journalists should be shot. “This is obviously not the outcome we had hoped for, given our profound disagreements with the Republican ticket on a whole host of issues,” Barack said. “In a country as big and diverse as ours, we won’t always see eye-to-eye on everything. But progress requires us to extend good faith and grace—even to people with whom we deeply disagree..”

Of course, I don’t just disagree with Trump. He supports policies that, as Democrats campaigned on last year, could kill me and so many other women and children. That—the direct, violent threat to my being—transcends “disagreement.”

And yet, Michelle, so far, is the odd one out. It’s tradition for former presidents and their spouses to attend inauguration and former President George W. Bush and Laura Bush and former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton will all reportedly be in attendance. As will Joe and Jill Biden alongside Barack.

I know tradition is tradition, but I’m personally of the radical opinion that Donald Trump shouldn’t be normalized. Democrats ran on that idea. In fact, I wonder how top Democrats don’t see it as insulting to their base to run on calling Trump a fascist and sexual abuser who locks kids in cages and whose laws are killing women, only to then lose and 10 minutes later act like they’re starring in a buddy comedy with the man.

If Trump is an existential threat—and he is—shouldn’t Democrats act like it, instead of acting like any of this is normal? If all those things they campaigned on are true, shouldn’t they be in overdrive trying to protect us from the giant monster they warned us of—not shrugging off our mere “disagreements,” or rolling over for his party’s fascist immigration bills?

Michelle has criticized Trump for placing her family in danger with his conspiracy theories and his general, vile rhetoric. Trump himself didn’t attend Biden’s inauguration in 2021… namely because he maintained that he didn’t actually lose the election, a lie that helped kill nine people at the U.S. Capitol four years ago.

I am of the mind that it’s entirely fair to not want to hang out with, normalize, or celebrate freaks who want to force people to give birth or threaten to kill or remove groups of people from the country, or drone strike or help drop bombs on children—which sadly applies to most people who’ve held the presidency. And, norms and civility be damned, it actually makes a whole lot of sense to not want to celebrate someone who’s endangered your children!

Michelle has famously palled around with Bush, which isn’t great—but she’s right about this!