US Former first lady, Michelle Obama has said President Donald Trump and his allies are “stoking fears about Black and Brown Americans” to win an election and called the President’s actions “morally wrong” and “racist” in her closing message to Americans in a campaign video.
“But right now, the President and his allies are trying to tap into that frustration and distract from his breathtaking failures by giving folks someone to blame other than them.
“They’re stoking fears about Black and Brown Americans, lying about how minorities will destroy the suburbs, whipping up violence and intimidation — and they’re pinning it all on what’s been an overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity.
“So what the President is doing is, once again, patently false. It’s morally wrong and yes, it is racist. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.”
She called the current American era a “difficult” and “confusing” time and warned that the President is good at using divisiveness, fear and “spreading lies” as tools to win as she made an appeal for empathy as a Black woman.
“I want everyone who is still undecided to think about all those folks like me and my ancestors,” she said, “the millions of folks who look like me and fought and died and toiled as slaves and soldiers and labourers to help build this country.”
“Racism, fear, division, these are powerful weapons,” Obama warned, “And they can destroy this nation if we don’t deal with them head on.”
The former first lady specifically addressed Black and Brown people in her message: “To all the young people out there, to all the Black and Brown folks, to anyone who feels frustrated and alienated by this whole system, I get it. I really do.”
Obama then beseeched voters, “Search your hearts, and your conscience, and then vote for Joe Biden like your lives depend on it.”
In the new video, Michelle Obama also crticized the President on his “failure” to take the pandemic seriously. The former first lady asked Americans to “look around the world” and compare the response to the pandemic in the United States against that in other countries.
“They had the same kind of resources to contain it as we did,” she said. “But what they didn’t have to contend with was this president.”
Obama said the President is a man who “knew how deadly this virus is, but who lied to us, and told us it would just disappear” and “doubled down on division and resentment.”
She urged Americans to make a plan to vote as she makes a pitch for Biden on personal terms, arguing that if the nation wants to regain “any kind of stability” every eligible voter must be involved.
The former first lady also made a direct appeal to women, drawing on her experience as a mother to make the case that the President’s leadership is not creating a safe environment for families and children.
“Everybody wants their kids back in school as soon as it’s safe,” she said. “But as a mom, it is frightening, thinking about all of these young people — who were just our babies yesterday — quarantined alone in dorms or apartments with little or no support as the disease continues to spread, unable to come home if their symptoms get worse. Just imagine the toll that worry is taking on families across this country.”
