Michelle Obama is making news again today, this time for criticizing President Trump's decision to tear down the East Wing of the White House and replace it with a ballroom.
Obama appeared on the Jamie Kem Lima podcast yesterday. I don't think I knew who Jamie Kem Lima was, but she's a cosmetics magnate who built her company on QVC and then sold it for over a billion dollars to L'Oreal. Now she has this podcast which I'd describe as white Oprah.
During a Tuesday, Nov. 25, appearance on the Jamie Kern Lima Show podcast, Obama, who served as the first lady alongside her husband, former President Barack Obama, from 2009 to 2017, shared her feelings while seeing the demolition take place.
“What did it feel like for you and your body when you saw the East Wing being demolished?” host Kern Lima asked Obama.
The mother of two noted, “It's not about me, it's about us and our traditions and what they stand for. I think in my body I felt confusion because I'm like, ‘Well, who are we? What do we value and who decides that?’ ”
Does anyone else find this a weird way to talk? I don't get it. How did you feel in your body? Is she prompting her to say she felt sick to her stomach? And Michelle's answer is just as odd. "I think in my body I felt confusion..." is a weird way to say 'I felt confused." Like, who else's body could you possible be feeling this in?
Anyway, Obama wasn't done.
“That's the thing that's going through my head a lot lately. ‘Who are we? What are the rules?’ ” she expressed. “Because I'm confused by what are our norms and our mores, not the laws, but how do we live together? That's the part of it that hurts. It's not the house … I'm just, you know, just trying to understand the assignment. And so I think I felt a loss for us as a nation.”
Look, I understand the East Wing was the First Lady's territory, so if she feels it's a loss for the nation, fine. But does she not get that the new thing that's replacing it could also be a benefit for the nation? The whole framing of this from start to finish is just entirely negative, i.e. something has been lost and we should all feel that loss.
This isn't the first time she's made this point. In another interview earlier this month she said this.
After explaining why she wanted to focus on beauty and fashion in her third book, she discussed the “renovating” that President Donald Trump has unleashed on the White House’s East Wing, which has traditionally been the office and domain of the first lady.
“When we talk about the East Wing, it is the heart of the work. And to denigrate it, to tear it down, to pretend like it doesn’t matter—it’s a reflection of how you think of that role,” Obama said. “Whether the West Wing understood it or not, I used to tell them: All the stuff we do on the East Wing, from the clothes I wear to [family dogs] Bo and Sunny to Malia and Sasha and grandma, those were five extra approval points that he got, because we provided a balance.”
And in yet another interview with the Today show a couple of days before that she also brought it up.
Bush Hager commented, “Well, there’s no guidebook,” and Obama replied, “There’s no guidebook,” before adding, “There’s barely a staff. Now we don’t have a building,” referring to the demolition of the East Wing. Bush Hager, laughing, said, “I know, R.I.P. the East Wing.”
So that's three interviews in a month. It's pretty clear she's leaning into the idea that the current president has done a terrible thing which we should all feel sad about.
Speaking of norms and understanding the assignment, usually former president's make some effort not to interfere or comment too much on what the current president is doing. They try to give them a little space and respect the office by not diving in to politics after leaving office. Barack Obama has already broken this norm by gearing up an effort to get California to gerrymander its House districts in time for the midterms, directly pushing back against Trump's push for the same thing in states like Texas.
But Michelle Obama is also crossing this line and for no clear benefit. She's on a book tour trying to sell her new book about fashion in the White House. It's too late to stop the East Wing from being torn down. Complaining about it week after week won't change anything. It just looks like partisan carping.
Michelle Obama needs to let it go. The ballroom is a good idea and much needed. Either say something nice about it or just go back to being a former first lady who sells books about her fashion choices and stays out of partisan politics.
.@MichelleObama took on the role of First Lady with grace and authenticity, lighting up every room she walked into. In her new book, The Look, Michelle reflects on her own style journey — from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago, to our eight years in the White House, to… pic.twitter.com/xKSrbkfeUH
— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) November 7, 2025
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