Former first lady Michelle Obama issued a lengthy statement on the siege of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump, calling out right-wing media and Silicon Valley tech companies for enabling his behavior.
“The day was a fulfillment of wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can’t handle the truth of his own failures,” Obama said. “And the wreckage lays at the feet of a party and media apparatus that gleefully cheered him on, knowing full well the possibility of consequences like these.”
She also said that tech platforms could do more to curb Trump by banning him from their platforms.
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“Now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior — and go even further than they have already by permanently banning this man from their platforms and putting in place policies to prevent their technology from being used by the nation’s leaders to fuel insurrection,” she said.
In the statement, Obama also noted the difference in law enforcement response to Black Lives Matter protests during the summer and the Capitol siege. “Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday’s riot and this summer’s peaceful protests and the larger movement for social justice is so painful,” she said. “It hurts. And I cannot think about moving on or turning the page until we reckon with the reality of what we saw yesterday.”
— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) January 7, 2021
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