The January 6 onslaught connected the Capitol was a daze to truthful galore people, including erstwhile First Lady Michelle Obama. The erstwhile FLOTUS recalled watching the events unfold alongside erstwhile President Barack Obama successful her caller book The Light We Carry: Overcoming In Uncertain Times, which was released connected Tuesday, November 15. Michelle recounted her fearfulness not lone astatine the convulsive battle from a mob to effort to overturn a escaped and just election, but besides astatine erstwhile President Donald Trump inciting his supporters.
Michelle reflected connected going to ticker President Joe Biden’s innauguration, 2 weeks aft the attack, and she said however astatine the moment, she couldn’t assistance but retrieve what she’d seen truthful soon before. “[The rioters] smashed windows, pounded down doors, attacked and injured constabulary officers, and breached into the chambers of the Senate, terrorizing our country’s leaders and putting ideology itself successful jeopardy,” she wrote astir the attack. “Barack and I had watched successful daze arsenic it unfolded unrecorded connected the news.”
Like truthful galore Americans, the erstwhile archetypal woman was disturbed to spot not lone the convulsive attack, but Trump’s rhetoric, which lone further motivated the crowd. “The events of that time rattled maine to the core. I’d understood that our state was grappling with a toxic level of governmental discord, but seeing the rhetoric extremity into reckless, rageful unit aimed astatine overturning an predetermination was devastating. Watching an American president promote a siege connected his ain authorities was possibly the astir frightening happening I’d ever witnessed,” she wrote successful the book.
Besides the January 6 attack, Michelle said that she was disgusted by her husband’s successor from the opening of his presidency. “It shook maine profoundly to perceive the antheral who’d replaced my hubby arsenic president openly and unapologetically utilizing taste slurs, making selfishness and hatred someway acceptable, refusing to condemn achromatic supremacists oregon to enactment radical demonstrating for radical justice,” she explained. “stuck successful my location implicit the frightening aboriginal months of 2020, I saw nary logic to immoderate of it. What I saw was a president whose deficiency of integrity was reflected successful an escalating nationalist decease count.”
The erstwhile First Lady hasn’t been the lone idiosyncratic to rebuke Trump’s actions during the January 6 attack. Besides the probe by the House Select Committee, which has even subpoenaed Trump, and callouts by President Joe Biden, erstwhile Vice President Mike Pence even expressed his outrage successful a caller interrogation with ABC News. “It angered me,” helium said erstwhile asked however helium felt astir Trump’s tweet calling him out. “The president’s words were reckless. It’s wide helium decided to beryllium portion of the problem.”