For most, the holiday season sparks feelings of gratitude, hope, and humility. But apparently not for the Obamas. Former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, appear less grateful than ever for the nation they once led, gloomier about its future, and more self-important than ever.
Michelle Obama’s heightened media presence in 2025 has shattered the carefully crafted persona of an inspiring leader that once earned her the title of America’s most admired woman on multiple occasions. Her weekly podcast, IMO with Michelle Obama and Craig Robinson, has featured hourslong tales of grievance from her time in the national spotlight, coming across to many as ungrateful griping from a position of immense privilege.
In May, Michelle Obama, who, with her husband, has a net worth of approximately $70 million with homes in Martha’s Vineyard, Washington, and Chicago, complained about having to pay for her own food while living in the White House. “If you say you want some exotic fruit, ‘Yes, ma’am, we’ll get that right away,’ and then you get the bill for a peach and it’s like, that was a $500 peach?” Imagine the horror of having to pay for your own produce while living in the most famous rent-free mansion on Earth.
She has also complained, at length, about how her eight-year stint in the White House stifled her ambitions and imposed upon her the burden of a “glam team,” — “it’s not a luxury to have a hair and makeup team,” she said.
Absent from her commentary is even a whisper of gratitude for the country that made her into quasi-royalty, heaping fortunes and fame upon this daughter of the South Side of Chicago and electing her husband president twice with a majority of the popular vote.
No, in Michelle Obama’s eyes, America remains unworthy of her approval. At a recent stop on tour for her new book, The Look: A Life in Style, the former first lady scolded Americans for being insufficiently enlightened about women in politics. Speaking at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with actress Tracee Ellis Ross, she framed 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s loss as proof of America’s deep-seated misogyny, declaring that the nation “ain’t ready” for female leadership and has “a lot of growing up” to do before even entertaining the idea of a woman in the Oval Office — let alone her.
“That’s why I’m like, ‘Don’t even look at me about running, because you all are lying,’” she remarked. “’You’re not ready for a woman. You are not. So don’t waste my time.’”
In Michelle Obama’s mind, the frequent attempts to draft her for the Democratic nomination for president amount to pestering because America is not yet mature enough to select a leader of her caliber. And Harris’s failure, according to her, has nothing to do with runaway inflation, millions of illegal immigrants crossing through a wide-open border, or wars breaking out around the globe but is reducible to her anatomy. Unlike Michelle Obama and her elite pals, ordinary people lack the sophistication — or perhaps the moral courage? — to choose a president based on their sex, not their policies or record.
Barack Obama, too, has made plain his disappointment with America in recent times. In the lead-up to the last election, he famously lectured “the brothas” for not rallying around Harris. Again, the implication being that black people, particularly black men, owe their votes to the Democratic Party out of racial solidarity rather than weighing the same economic pain, crime concerns, and border chaos as everyone else.
His dismay at the state of our politics, captured over the years by his condescending catchphrase “that’s not who we are!” extends to the nation as a whole — he frequently laments the “toxicity and division” in our politics, as if he played no part in sharpening the divide through incessant identity politics.
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And now, he admits to thinking little of the Democratic Party. Just last week, he huddled with dozens of freshman House Democrats with the goal, according to a person close to him, of building “a sustainable Democratic Party that can survive without him.” Given the current makeup of Washington, Barack Obama might want to consider whether the Democratic Party can survive with him.
Thankfully, people have moved on despite the lecturing, while the Obamas continue to cling bitterly to their glory days of influence. Perhaps people wouldn’t be so eager to turn the page on the couple if they showed a little gratitude for the nation that made them royalty once.
