Michelle Obama hits Trump over his inauguration: 'There weren't that many people there'
Michelle Obama is taking a swing at former President Trump’s claims of “massive” turnout at his 2017 inauguration, saying “there weren’t that many people there.”
The former first lady makes the dig at Trump in “Michelle Obama: The Light Podcast,” debuting Tuesday on Audible. A preview clip from the podcast was shared with People magazine on Monday.
Describing her feelings while leaving the White House for the last time with then-President Obama, she said, "You walk through the Capitol, you wave goodbye, you get on Marine One, and you take your last flight flying over the Capitol.”
"Where there weren't that many people there — we saw it, by the way!" Obama, 59, added.
Trump famously defended the size of the crowd in attendance at the inauguration following his 2016 White House win.
“We had a massive field of people, you saw that. Packed,” he said at the time, accusing the media of lying about the numbers.
Photos that compared Trump’s inauguration crowd on the National Mall to President Barack Obama’s inaugural audience showed a significantly sparser crowd for the 45th president.
In her remarks about Inauguration Day, the former first lady told NBC’s Hoda Kotb that it was “so emotional for so many different reasons.”
"We were leaving the home we had been in for eight years, the only home our kids really knew," the mother of two said.
Obama said there was a noticeable lack of diversity at Trump’s inaugural ceremony, and that she was brought to tears after boarding Air Force One one last time.
"To sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display — there was no diversity, there was no color on that stage," she said. "There was no reflection of the broader sense of America."
"When those [Air Force One] doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight, uncontrollable sobbing, because that's how much we were holding it together for eight years,” Obama said.
"Many people took pictures of me and they're like, 'You weren't in a good mood?' No, I was not!” she added. “But you had to hold it together, like you do for eight years."