Michelle Obama’s office released a statement Tuesday, saying that the former first lady will not accompany her husband to Donald Trump’s inauguration next Monday. It will be the second time in two weeks that she has missed a gathering of U.S. leaders and their spouses, after she also didn’t attend the Jan. 9 funeral of former President Jimmy Carter.

As with Carter’s funeral, where Michelle Obama likely would have been seated next to Trump, her office didn’t give a reason for her non-attendance at his swearing-in ceremony. Whether she again has a “scheduling” conflict, as with Carter’s funeral, she made it pretty clear five months earlier that she didn’t think much of Trump as a president or as a human being.

During her widely praised speech at the Democratic National Convention in July, Michelle Obama argued that women’s lives would be at risk if Trump were elected to a second term and offered one of her party’s “most emphatic takedowns” of the 45th president, mostly without naming him, as the New York Times reported.

In praising Vice President Kamala Harris’ “dignity,” qualifications and accomplishments, she mocked Trump’s background of privilege, his career of business failures and the “luxury” he’s enjoyed of  “whining or cheating others to get further ahead.”

Michelle Obama, who previously campaigned against Trump in 2016 and 2020, also turned his more controversial comment about “black jobs” against him, as she called him out for promoting birtherism, racism and “lies.”

TOPSHOT – L-R: First Lady Melania Trump, President Donald Trump,former President Barack Obama, Michelle Obama at the US Capitol after inauguration ceremonies at the in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2017. / AFP PHOTO / JIM WATSONJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images 

Before and during Barack Obama’s presidency, he and his wife became the target of unfounded claims by Trump, his wife Melania Trump and other Republicans that his birth certificate was a forgery, NPR reported. Michelle Obama said that the Oakland-born former San Francisco prosecutor, who identifies as Black and Asian American, should expect the same kind of attacks. Indeed, Trump made false claims about Harris’s racial identity after she became the Democratic nominee, saying that “all of a sudden … she became a Black person.”

“We know folks are going to do everything they can to distort her truth,” Michelle Obama said. “My husband and I, sadly, know a little something about this. For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.”

She continued, “His limited and narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who also happened to be Black.”

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In a moment that got the crowd on their feet cheering and laughing, Michelle Obama said, “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?”

Michelle Obama was referring to Trump’s comments during his June debate against President Biden, according to NPR. Trump said immigrants coming into the U.S. were “taking Black jobs now.” She also was acknowledging the fact that her Black husband served two terms as president and a Black woman was running to be the nation’s 47th president.

Again, without naming Trump, Michelle Obama contrasted his background with Harris, who was raised by a middle-class single mother in Berkeley. She said that Americans like how Harris understands “that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” a reference to Trump’s business troubles, the New York Times said.

Michelle Obama also noted that most Americans don’t grow up with “the affirmative action of generational wealth.” Trump was born the son of a wealthy developer in Queens, New York and, according to a New 2018 New York Times investigation, received more than $413 million from his father over the decades, much of that through “tax dodges,” including “outright fraud.”

“If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top,” Michelle Obama, receiving thunderous applause with each line.

The Office of Barack and Michelle Obama released a statement to the Associated Press Tuesday, saying that Barack Obama would attend the 60th Inaugural Ceremonies but not his wife. Laura Bush and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also will join their husbands, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, respectively, for Trump’s swearing-in ceremony at the U.S. Capitol.

Michelle Obama attended Trump’s first inauguration in 2017 when she was the outgoing first lady. She and her husband also participated in one of the most enduring “transfer-of-power” rituals on Inauguration Day, according to CNN. That is when the outgoing president and his wife greet the new first couple on the steps of the North Portico of White House, bring them inside for tea or coffee, then ride with them to the U.S. Capitol.

Michelle and Barack Obama performed that courtesy for Donald and Melania Trump in January 2017, though the Trumps didn’t extend that courtesy for Joe and Jill Biden in 2021 after Trump lost the 2020 election.