Former first lady Michelle Obama said in an interview Monday that the 2024 election is among the things that keep her up at night.
Obama, who turns 60 later this month, sat down with Jay Shetty for more than an hour for an episode of his On Purpose podcast.
She never used former President Donald Trump’s name, but told Shetty she feared that Americans were taking ‘democracy for granted,’ echoing the concerns President Joe Biden shared during his Valley Forge speech Friday.
‘What’s going to happen in this next election? I am terrified about what could possibly happen because our leaders matter,’ Obama said.
She continued, ‘Who we select speaks fo rus. Who holds that bully pulpit, it affects us in ways that sometimes I think people take for granted.’
Former first lady Michelle Obama told podcaster Jay Shetty that she is ‘terrified’ about the 2024 election and voiced concerns that Americans took democracy for granted, but didn’t mention former President Donald Trump by name
Obama sat down with podcaster Jay Shetty (pictured) who asked her what kept her up at night. The former first lady said, ‘There’s such a thing as knowing too much,’ which she said was definitely the case when your husband is the president of the United States
‘You know, the fact that people think that government, ehhh, you know, doesn’t really even do anything and I’m like, “oh my God, does government do everything for us,”‘ she continued. ‘And we cannot take this democracy for granted. And sometimes I worry that we do.’
Before mentioning the 2024 election, Obama said she also feared war in ‘too many regions,’ artificial intellgience, climate change, education and people spending too much time on theri phones.
‘Are people going to vote and why aren’t people voting?’ she also said.
‘I mean those are the things that keep me up,’ Obama said.
Her status as a former first lady, she said, also made her worry more.
‘There’s such a thing as knowing too much,’ Obama said. ‘And when you’ve been married to the president of the United States who knows everything about everything in the world, sometimes you just want to turn it off.’
‘I don’t want to know what was in that folder that you just got that made you quiet, you know? I don’t want to know why the security just pulled you over,’ she continued. ‘I mean it could be any range of things that comes across the desk of the leader of the free world, right? So I know a lot about what’s going on and what keeps me up are the things that I know.’
Since departing the White House in 2017, Obama said she’s taken up knitting – a pandemic-era hobby – and has gotten into tennis to quiet her mind.
‘I’ve developed habits that shut my brain off to thinking,’ she said.
‘Learning something physical shuts my mind down,’ she noted, pointing to her efforts to play tennis. ‘Nothing shuts my mind down like running after a green ball.’
Michelle Obama’s 2024 election worries come after The Washington Post reported Saturday that former President Barack Obama attended an off-the-books lunch with Biden in recent months and grew ‘animated,’ warning the president that his campaign needed to kick it into high gear to deal with the threat of Trump.
Trump has been out-polling his Republican rivals in the GOP primary and is ahead of the Democratic president in a number of key swing state polls.
Biden took his first big swipe at Trump in 2024 by delivering remarks Friday from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, a crucial location in the Revolutionary War.
The president warned that Trump represented a threat to democracy, a day before the third anniversary of the Capitol riot.
‘Donald Trump’s campaign is obsessed with the past not the future. He’s willing to sacrifice our democracy, put himself in power,’ Biden said.
Trump shot back at a campaign rally Friday night in Iowa, telling his supporters that Biden ‘stuttered’ through his January 6-themed speech.
‘He’s going bah bah bah he’s a threat to democracy,’ Trump said, mimicking Biden’s childhood speech impediment.