Trump alleges Michelle Obama made "vicious" attacks on Hillary Clinton
Donald Trump has been bringing up comments from Michelle Obama in 2007, suggesting that they show she really doesn’t like Hillary Clinton, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the fact that Obama is seen as one of her most compelling surrogates on the campaign trail.
On Sunday morning, he tweeted a quote from Michelle Obama:
"If you can't run your own house you certainly can't run the White House" A statement made by Mrs. Obama about Crooked Hillary Clinton
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 23, 2016
The quote in question was first circulated by an ad from a pro-Trump super PAC this fall. David Axelrod, who was chief strategist for President Obama’s 2008 campaign, said on Twitter that the campaign never ran any ads in which Michelle Obama attacked Clinton.
Trump alluded to his Michelle Obama allegations in his own campaign speech in the last few days. “We have a president, all he wants to do is campaign. His wife, all she wants to do is campaign,” Trump said. “And I see how much his wife likes Hillary, but wasn’t she the one that originally started the statement, if you can’t take care of your home – right? – you can’t take care of the White House or the country.”
He asked rhetorically why it was no one was drawing attention to the 2007 quote.
“Where is that? I don’t hear that. I don’t hear that. She’s the one that started that. I said, ‘We can’t say that, it’s too vicious.’ Can you believe it? I said that,” he continued. “They said, well, Michele Obama said it. I said she did? Now she said that, but we don’t hear about that.”
This part of the quote from Obama is accurate: “If you can’t run your own house you certainly can’t run the White House.”
Obama’s remarks from a speech in Atlantic, Iowa in August 2007, do not mention Hillary Clinton. Here’s what she said:
“So our view was that, if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. So, so we’ve adjusted our schedules to make sure that our girls are first, so while he’s traveling around, I do day trips. That means I get up in the morning, I get the girls ready, I get them off, I go and do trips, I’m home before bedtime. So the girls know that I was gone somewhere, but they don’t care. They just know that I was at home to tuck them in at night, and it keeps them grounded, and, and children, the children in our country have to know that they come first. And our girls do and that’s why we’re doing this. We’re in this race for not just our children, but all of our children.”
As Politifact pointed out, a Chicago Sun-Times thought her remarks could be seen as a veiled swipe at Clinton, and other media outlets also discussed that possibility. Then-Sen. Obama denied the comment had anything to do with Clinton. “There was no reference beyond her point that we have had an administration that talks a lot about family values but doesn’t follow through,” he said on a conference call later.