She might be the breakout star of this year’s campaign trail, but First Lady Michelle Obama won’t be making the jump from surrogate to candidate.
That’s according to her husband, who firmly told a radio show his wife “will never run for office.”
“She is as talented and brilliant a person as there is, and I could not be prouder of her, but Michelle does not have the patience or the inclination to actually be a candidate herself, and that’s one thing you all can take to the bank,” President Barack Obama said on the “Sway in the Morning” show in an interview that aired Friday, part of a get-out-the-vote push for Hillary Clinton.
Michelle Obama has become a powerful surrogate for Clinton, appearing at large rallies in battlegrounds and denouncing Republican nominee Donald Trump.
She made her first joint appearance with Clinton on Thursday in North Carolina, where she praised her fellow first lady and issued a warning about being deterred from voting.
“That’s the strategy — to make this election so dirty and ugly that we don’t want any part of it,” she said. “So when you hear folks talking about a global conspiracy and saying that this election is rigged, understand that they are trying to get you to stay home. They are trying to convince you that your vote doesn’t matter, that the outcome has already been determined and you shouldn’t even bother making your voice heard.”
Many Democrats have expressed an eagerness for the first lady to utilize her powerful speaking skills and wealth of popularity to make a bid for office herself. But she’s consistently expressed a distaste for politics, even revealing she didn’t want her husband to enter political life.
The President said in the interview Thursday the first lady would instead remain focused on the issues she’s championed as first lady, including education for girls.
“We’re going to be doing a lot of work, we’ll just be doing it in a different way,” he said.