Almost nine in ten TikTok users who have used Instagram Reels say that Facebook’s TikTok competitor is basically the same as TikTok. And 61% said they’ll be spending more time in Instagram as a result.
“This strong number for Instagram is driven by the fact that TikTok users who have used Instagram Reels do not think that TikTok is inherently special,” says Tommy Walters, research and insights managers at social media content company Whistle.
That is my sentiment exactly.
TikTok, of course, is being forced to sell to an American company by the Trump administration, although the company is contesting that order in court. That controversy doesn’t have appeared to hurt TikTok: it is still the third most-downloaded app in the United States, according to AppFigures data.
But the controversy is also helping other apps.
Instagram usage is up, but so is Snapchat and other apps.
34% of TikTok users say they’ll spend more time on Snapchat, which is currently the ninth most-downloaded app in the U.S. Only 10% say they’ll spend more time on Triller, a TikTok competitor, and another 10% say they’ll spend more time on Byte.
Interestingly, people don’t seem more worried about Chinese companies getting and using their personal data, which is ostensibly driving the government ruling requiring TikTok’s sale.
Rather, they don’t like it across the board.
“75% are worried about an American company obtaining their personal data,” Whistle says while 67% are very or somewhat worried about a Chinese company obtaining their personal data,” Whistle says, adding that TikTok users aren’t super-happy about copycats. “63% agree that larger social media companies like Facebook, who owns Instagram, should not be allowed to copy newer social media companies like TikTok.”
The sample size is not huge — 686 18-34 year olds — but Whistle says it is nationally representative.
Ultimately, the results cast doubt on whether any company that buys TikTok, if a sale proceeds, will be able to maintain the company’s incredible growth rate, or if that growth might be captured by existing market players like Facebook and Instagram.
And, of course, the news shows once again that no publicity is bad publicity. Even though Tiktok has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, usage is up.
“Since a TikTok ban has been discussed in the news, 44% of daily or weekly TikTok users have been spending more time on the platform, with only 10% reporting spending less time on the platform,” says Tommy Walters.
Figurines of Greek mythical characters Trump ordered removed from the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Paris in November 2018, now on display in the Oval Office. Photographer: Justin Sink/Bloomberg
After Donald Trump’s planned trip to a French cemetery for fallen Marines was canceled in November 2018, the U.S. leader had some extra time on his hands in a mansion filled with artwork. The next day, he went art shopping — or the presidential equivalent.
Trump fancied several of the pieces in the U.S. ambassador’s historic residence in Paris, where he was staying, and on a whim had them removed and loaded onto Air Force One, according to people familiar with the matter. The works — a portrait, a bust, and a set of silver figurines — were brought back to the White House.
The decision to cancel Trump’s visit to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside Paris is under new scrutiny after the Atlantic magazine on Thursday published a bombshell report that Trump belittled the American servicemen buried there, part of a broader history of disparaging certain people who’ve served in the military. Trump has vehemently denied making the comments about “suckers” and “losers” in the armed forces.
Never previously reported is Trump’s spur-of-the-moment art caper before leaving the ambassador’s residence.
The incident was met with a mixture of amusement and astonishment at the time, but caused headaches for White House and State Department staffers, according to several people familiar with the episode who asked not to be identified due to its sensitivity.
Chic Mansion
The story unfolded like this: While in Paris with other world leaders to commemorate the centennial of the end of World War I, Trump stayed at the official residence of U.S. Ambassador Jamie McCourt, the palatial Hôtel de Pontalba. The mansion, in Paris’s chic 8th arrondissement, dates to 1842. It has served as a flagship of the State Department’s “Art in Embassies” cultural diplomacy program, and is open to tours.
The president’s planned visit to the Belleau Wood cemetery was canceled when rainy weather grounded the presidential helicopter, according to a redacted email the White House released to rebut the Atlantic story. The U.S. Secret Service ruled out a motorcade for the 56-mile drive, according to two people familiar with the matter.
That left Trump with about six hours of free time in the ambassador’s residence.
The next day, Trump pointed out a Benjamin Franklin bust, a Franklin portrait and a set of figurines of Greek mythical characters, and insisted the pieces come back with him to Washington.
The People’s House
McCourt, the ambassador, was startled, but didn’t object, according to people briefed on the incident. Trump later quipped that the envoy would get the art back “in six years,” when his potential second term in office would be winding down.
The art, worth about $750,000 according to one of the people familiar with the episode, was loaded aboard Air Force One while Trump visited another cemetery before the flight back to Washington.
“The President brought these beautiful, historical pieces, which belong to the American people, back to the United States to be prominently displayed in the People’s House,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in response to questions from Bloomberg News.
Trump’s move prompted some hair-pulling and a furious exchange of emails back home between the State Department’s Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations and White House officials who organized the art transfer. Ultimately, because the art is U.S. government property, the move was deemed legal.
Purchase Policy
Trump, who once used his charity to purchase a large portrait of himself, is known to display in his private West Wing dining room mementos from various official trips and encounters. Over time that’s included a pair of shoes gifted by musician Kanye West and an Ultimate Fighting Championship belt.
A senior White House official said presidents are permitted to display personal gifts from Americans or heads of state while they’re in office, but must purchase them if they want to keep the presents after they depart.
The figurines that caught Trump’s eye found a new home on the fireplace mantel in the Oval Office. Depicting Greek gods, they date to the early 20th century and were made by Neapolitan artist Luigi Avolio, who was trying to pass them off as sculptures from the 16th or 17th centuries, according to London-based art dealer Patricia Wengraf.
Portrait Gallery
In an “Antiques Roadshow” moment, Wengraf described the figurines as “20th century fakes of wannabe 17th century sculptures,” and of little value.
The French art-collection episode comes with a curious footnote. After White House art curators examined the pieces Trump brought home, the president was told that the Franklin bust was a replica. He joked that he liked the fake better than the original, two people familiar with the episode said.
The Franklin portrait snagged from Paris was also a copy — of the one Joseph Siffred Duplessis painted in France in 1785, which was then held by the National Portrait Gallery a mile from the White House.
The curators removed a different portrait of the founding father from the Oval Office and borrowed the original Duplessis from the gallery. That one now hangs in the Oval, not the replica Trump ferried out of France.
TOKYO (Reuters) – In the days leading up to Shinzo Abe’s surprise resignation last month as rumors of his ill health swirled in Japan, the prime minister’s right-hand man, Yoshihide Suga, was courting a ruling party boss whose backing could make him king.
Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga arrives at the ceremony site where Emperor Naruhito will report the conduct of the enthronement ceremony at the Imperial Sanctuary inside the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, Japan, October 22, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-ji
In a secluded dining room in an upscale Tokyo hotel, Suga met with Toshihiro Nikai, the secretary-general of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), for a traditional Japanese meal. They shared stories from their youth when they both worked as secretaries for powerful politicians, according to a columnist who dined with them.
The dinner, Nikai’s third with Suga in as many months, came little over a week before Abe stepped down as Japan’s longest-serving premier and highlighted the kind of alliance-building that has made Suga the leading candidate to replace him.
At the dinner, Suga thanked Nikai for keeping a firm grip over the LDP, saying it had allowed Abe’s administration to execute its policies with ease, according to Fumiya Shinohara, the political columnist who was there with them.
Two weeks later, Nikai’s group was the first among the party’s factions to endorse Suga for the top job, support that makes him almost certain to be Japan’s next prime minister.
“In an environment where human relationships are paramount, that has been Mr. Suga’s best weapon,” said Shinohara, adding that their exchange over dinner cemented an alliance now poised to control the ruling party.
Suga’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the dinner. Suga has said, when asked on television about their discussion, that he and Nikai share a similar background and that he had introduced him to various people.
Nikai could not immediately be reached for comment.
For the past eight years, Suga, 71, has been the public face of the Abe administration as the government’s top spokesman but long kept a relatively low profile. He became better known to the public when he unveiled the name, Reiwa, of the new imperial era last year, a celebratory moment that marked the ascension of the new emperor and went viral, earning him the nickname “Uncle Reiwa”.
Behind the scenes, associates and analysts say Suga has been instrumental in shifting elements of decision making from Japan’s sprawling bureaucracy to the premier’s office and taming factional rivalries within the ruling party.
Suga is widely expected to stay the policy course set out by his predecessor, maintaining the “Abenomics” pro-growth stimulus policies aimed at pulling Japan out of deflation and keeping the economy afloat during the coronavirus pandemic.
“Suga will carry on the vision Abe is handing over to him,” said Takashi Ryuzaki, a political analyst and former TV journalist. “So there is no need for Suga to have his own vision.”
‘SOMEONE YOU WOULDN’T NOTICE’
In contrast to Abe, the scion of a political dynasty in Japan who staked his career on constitutional reform, Suga began his political career an outsider and rose through the ranks in local politics.
At a news conference on Wednesday where he officially announced his bid, Suga spoke about growing up in a farming community in Japan’s northern Akita prefecture.
“He was very quiet,” said Hiroshi Kawai, a former high school classmate who still lives in Suga’s hometown of Yuzawa and works as a local tour guide. “He was someone you wouldn’t notice if he was there or not.”
Suga left town soon after finishing high school and worked in a cardboard factory in Tokyo to save money for university. After graduation, he worked as a secretary for a prominent national lawmaker from Yokohama, home to Japan’s busiest port.
During his time in local politics, Suga pushed an ambitious project to redevelop Yokohama’s waterfront, according to Isao Mori, an author who published Suga’s biography in 2016. In the eight years he spent in the city assembly, Suga rose to be known as Yokohama’s “shadow mayor,” Mori said.
‘ACTOR ON A STAGE’
Suga has said he begins most days at 5 a.m., checking the news before doing 100 sit-ups and taking a 40-minute walk. Even among staffers used to the grueling schedules of politicians, he was seen as an outlier for his relentless work ethic.
Daisuke Yusa first met Suga in 2004 when he was working as a salesman for a garbage company. Suga soon recruited him to work as his secretary.
“He used to say, think of yourself as an actor on a stage and think objectively about what position you’re in now,” Yusa said, when asked about perceptions that Suga is more of a lieutenant than a leader.
Yusa, now a local politician, said Suga always emphasized the importance of doing one’s best no matter what the job.
“I think he’s been able to remain in such a position without school ties or political faction because he doesn’t try to stand out,” he said.
Under Abe’s first administration in 2006, Suga headed the ministry of internal affairs where he introduced a hometown tax program, offering tax deductions for those who donate money to local municipalities.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (L) speaks to Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga before Suga answers questions during a lower house budget committee session at the parliament in Tokyo, Japan, February 20, 2014. REUTERS/Yuya Shino
Matsushige Ono, who served as a vice minister under Suga, said the program met fierce resistance from some bureaucrats, who opposed introducing a novel tax scheme without precedent.
“He continued to make his case because he saw how this would help rural communities,” Ono said.
NAVIGATING BUREAUCRACY
When Abe regained the premiership at the end of 2012, he again tapped Suga.
In 2016, facing an ever-stronger yen, Suga created a framework for joint Bank of Japan, finance ministry and banking regulator meetings to signal to investors Tokyo’s alarm over spikes in the yen.
Officials had wanted to create such a framework for years, but friction between ministries prevented it from being implemented.
Mitsumaru Kumagai, chief economist at the Daiwa Institute of Research who frequently speaks to Suga, said Suga has been particularly adept at navigating Japan’s complex bureaucracy.
“He is aware of who and where the key person is in any ministry and he understands how to move organisations by instructing that person,” Kumagai said.
This year, support for the administration went into freefall as the coronavirus pandemic battered an already slowing economy. When Abe’s health began to visibly falter, speculation grew over Suga’s ambitions.
Shinohara, who joined the August dinner between Suga and Nikai, said the two men had bonded over their similar backgrounds.
“There are a lot of politicians now who can give good speeches and others from bureaucracies who can manage policy, but he’s the kind of professional politician who has his own distinct smell,” he said.
After dinner, the men left the hotel separately as journalists snapped pictures. A day later, Suga was asked on a TV programme whether he was interested in running for the prime minister’s job. Laughing, he said: “Not at all.”
We’ve all seen old science fiction films where, in the future, people are zipping around on their flying cars. Well, the future is now! In Japan, the Toyota-backed startup SkyDrive conducted the first public run of their flying vehicle. Whizzing around the Toyota test field, the single passenger flying car made quite an impression.
Looking like an enormous drone, the vehicle was manned by a pilot and hovered several feet above the ground while maneuvering around the test field. Though the flight lasted just four minutes, it is an incredible achievement for SkyDrive. Designed to be the world’s smallest electric Vertical Take-Off and Landing (eVTOL) vehicle, SkyDrive’s SD-03 model takes up the space of just two parked cars. The sleek cabin is surrounded by eight rotors powered by individual engines, which ensures safety during emergency situations.
While the test drive is certainly a breakthrough, there’s still work to be done. SkyDrive is hoping to complete enough test flights in the enclosed area to meet safety provisions that will allow the team to take it for flights outside the test field. Currently, this futuristic mode of transit can only fly for just five to 10 minutes. SkyDrive president Tomohiro Fukuzawa hopes that this can be expanded to 30 minutes, which would make the vehicle helpful in exports.
“We want to realize a society where flying cars are an accessible and convenient means of transportation in the skies and people are able to experience a safe, secure, and comfortable new way of life,” says Fukuzawa.
The aim of SkyDrive is to have its flying car on the market by 2023. To do so, the company will be making a big push in the coming years, helped in part by Toyota’s funding and the expertise of its engineers. Whatever hurdles it faces, one thing is for certain, they’ve brought us one step closer to living out our Jetsons fantasy.
Walmart’s late entry this week into the scramble to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations left some people with a question.
Two questions, actually:
Walmart? Really?
But the proposed teaming up of the giant retailer and Microsoft to run the video app in the United States makes more sense in light of the direction TikTok’s owner has taken its sibling app in China, its home country.
That version of the app, Douyin, which works much like TikTok but is available only in China, has become not only a platform for goofy videos but also an e-commerce destination with the kind of reach among young buyers that Walmart would love to have.
The Chinese social media giant that runs both apps, ByteDance, began testing e-commerce features on Douyin in 2018. That was well before the company rolled out a “Shop Now” button on TikTok in recent months that redirects users to shopping sites.
Smartphone users in China have taken, in a big way, to buying things while they watch people hawk the products — think QVC and late-night television infomercials reinvented for the mobile age. Chinese e-commerce platforms have for years been adding livestreaming to their apps, and video apps have been adding shopping functions. In all, $140 billion in merchandise could be sold in China this year via livestreaming, more than double last year’s amount, according to estimates by the research firm Bernstein.
The sheer size of the Chinese consumer market has created a vast field for retail experiments of other kinds as well. One of the country’s newest e-commerce giants, Pinduoduo, has turned internet shopping into something more like a surreal video game. For Pinduoduo’s fans, the process of stumbling across strange new products, at ludicrously low prices, is a big part of the experience. Actually receiving those products is almost secondary. Currently, nearly 570 million people use Pinduoduo’s app every month.
Douyin started out by allowing video creators to post links to their stores on China’s largest online bazaar, Alibaba’s Taobao platform. Eventually, it allowed users to set up storefronts within the Douyin app itself, and now it is more aggressively pushing creators to sell through those native stores instead of on outside sites.
For most Chinese consumers, Douyin is not about to replace Taobao and other full-fledged shopping sites entirely. The design of the app means the products that sell best are cheap impulse buys, said Fabian Bern, the head of Many, a marketing company that works with creators on Douyin and TikTok.
“You’re scrolling very quick through content,” Mr. Bern said, which means that few people on the app are going to buy, say, a pricey wristwatch. “You will think twice about it, then basically the video is gone already.”
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“That’s why I think the Walmart thing is pretty interesting,” he added. “They can sell their cheaper products directly to that audience in TikTok.”
Bargain-bin prices do not guarantee customer satisfaction. Last year, an anonymous author wrote a widely shared account of buying a half-pound of dried shrimp on Douyin and feeling cheated. The app showed plump, palm-size specimens that had supposedly been grilled at home by a kindly-looking lady. But the shrimp that came in the mail were tiny and smelly, the person wrote. Then, when the person tried to get a refund, little information was to be found.
Mr. Bern acknowledged that ByteDance had much to learn when it came to customer service in retail. He said that if TikTok’s e-commerce features were not yet as advanced as Douyin’s, it was in part because Chinese influencers were more entrepreneurial about trying to convert their appeal as video stars into sales of physical products.
TikTok’s more global audience has also forced ByteDance to be more cautious about making changes to the platform than it is with Douyin.
“We’ve seen that TikTok is going to be exactly like Douyin. It’s just a little bit slower,” Mr. Bern said. “There’s nothing unique to TikTok that was not on Douyin.”
Countries with women leaders suffered half as many COVID deaths on average compared to countries with male leaders, academics have found.
New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have received praise for their countries’ response to coronavirus, while US President Donald Trump has been criticised. But even with the best and worst outliers removed, statistical analysis of 194 countries by the University of Liverpool still showed that women leaders performed better.
Professor Supriya Garikipati said: “Our results clearly indicate that women leaders reacted more quickly and decisively in the face of potential fatalities. In almost all cases, they locked down earlier than male leaders in similar circumstances.
“While this may have longer-term economic implications, it has certainly helped these countries to save lives, as evidenced by the significantly lower number of deaths in these countries.”
With only 19 countries out of 194 led by women, researchers created “nearest neighbour” countries based on a number of factors, such as GDP, population, population age, health expenditure, equality and openness to travel. So Leo Varadkar’s Ireland was compared to Jacinda Ardern’s New Zealand; Sheikh Hasina’s Bangladesh was compared to Pakistan, led by Arif Alvi; and Ana Brnabić’s Serbia was compared to Israel, led by Benjamin Netanyahu.
Professor Garikipati said: “Nearest neighbour analysis clearly confirms that when women-led countries are compared to countries similar to them along a range of characteristics, they have performed better, experiencing fewer cases as well as fewer deaths.”
Researchers found that women leaders tended to lock their countries down earlier. Rather than an example of gender stereotypes around risk aversion, the researchers argue that women leaders were willing to risk their economies to preserve human life.
The researchers argue that “having a clear, empathetic and decisive communication style made a significant difference to immediate outcomes of the COVID pandemic in women-led countries”.
Professor Garkipati said: “Our findings show that COVID outcomes are systematically and significantly better in countries led by women and, to some extent, this may be explained by the proactive policy responses they adopted. Even accounting for institutional context and other controls, being female-led has provided countries with an advantage in the current crisis.”
The authors hope that the paper will serve as a “starting point” in the debate about how national leaders affected the pandemic.
Travel planning has changed — and not in a good way. In addition to booking a flight and hotel, travelers are faced with questions that were unthinkable just six months ago.
Where can I go? Do I need a negative Covid-19 test result to enter? Must I quarantine upon arrival?
If I’m allowed in, should I go? Are Covid-19 infections on the rise? Will the holiday be what I want — or will shops, restaurants and beaches be closed?
Cutting through the chaos
A new website answers all but one of these questions (whether you should go is on you).
Launched in May, Covid Controls was developed by a team who met while working at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research & Technology (SMART), a research center created in 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in partnership with the National Research Foundation of Singapore.
“We were a team conducting research at the intersection of big data, design and travel,” said Mohit Shah, who along with three colleagues launched the website four months after leaving SMART.
“We created it because we saw there was no comprehensive Covid-19 dashboard specifically geared toward travelers,” he said, “especially at a time when the situation is changing so rapidly.”
What the site can tell you
Covid Controls tracks travel restrictions and Covid-19 data from around the world to provide “everything a foreign visitor needs to know” before traveling, said Shah.
Information is presented in color-coded maps, and countries can be clicked or searched by name to determine which places are allowing tourists (and which are banning them), whether airports are open, and whether documentation and medical testing are required to enter.
Covid Controls is a dashboard to locate Covid-19 travel information for countries across the globe.
Lockdown details, if any, are also provided, allowing travelers to check whether curfews are in effect and if restaurants, bars, shops and tourist attractions are open — with or without restrictions.
The Covid-19 data is particularly helpful to understand the extent of a country’s current outbreak. Travelers can review new daily cases, the number of people presently sick, containment statistics and outbreak trends, the latter being Shah’s favorite part of the site.
“It shows where the curve is flattening, growing or declining,” he said.
Data can be found for each of the 50 states of the United States, Canada’s 13 provinces and territories, Russia’s eight federal districts, and Australia’s six states plus two major territories.
At the bottom of each destination page, a list of sources is available, followed by links to recent media coverage of the area. For example, you can see that while the Dominican Republic is open to tourists, the Miami Herald reported that hospitals there reached capacity with Covid-19 patients about two weeks ago, which may affect your decision to travel there.
The website added a new feature this week. Users can now indicate where they live (or have recently traveled) to see which countries they can visit.
“This way you’ll be able to visualize, for example as an American resident, exactly which countries you are allowed, allowed with restrictions, or completely prohibited,” said Shah.
The designation of some countries as “partially allowed” is based on how welcoming the government is to tourists. Factors for that determination include: the number of entry points, limits on tourist activities (such as closed regions or attractions) and quarantine and entrance requirements (such as medical tests, tracing apps, insurance or other documents).
What the site can’t tell you
Not every country is covered. Information for some small nations, such as Bermuda and Vatican City, aren’t included on the site (yet), though countries like Monaco and the Marshall Islands are.
Separately, it’s difficult to obtain accurate information from some areas, particularly African countries that are not popular tourist destinations, Shah said.
Some U.S. states and the U.K. do not report recoveries. The team now uses a methodology to estimate that data; if a case is not marked as a death or hospitalization after six weeks, they assume it to be a recovered case. Those assumptions will be clearly marked as estimates, Shah said.
How does the website work?
Covid Controls tracks over 500 official sources, including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, various tourism boards, official foreign travel advisories and local news agencies. It’s updated daily, and information is curated both algorithmically and manually.
Medical data comes from the World Health Organization, The Covid Tracking Project (a volunteer organization launched from The Atlantic) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Users are also instrumental in fine tuning the website, Shah said. When a Singapore-based CNBC editor pointed out that Singapore households can accept up to five guests per household, not 10, Shah sent the newspaper article that his team relied on for that information.
“We will update this right away,” he said (which they did). “This is exactly why we have added a chat button on the website. People can quickly point out if something has changed in their country.”
Portraits commemorate people as well as a moment in time. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is often considered the archetype of Renaissance portraiture. Similarly, Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring is sometimes referred to as the “Mona Lisa of the north.” Even today, these two masterpieces continue to inspire generations of young creatives. Spanish artist Tati Moons reimagines the enigmatic sitters of these paintings as contemporary women in trendy digital portraits.
“I was planning on painting the Mona Lisa just for fun for a few years as I really enjoy doing fan arts, and one day I was kinda bored and I just did it,” Moons tells My Modern Met. Not only did Moons modernize the Mona Lisa‘s wardrobe with a black sleeveless dress, but she also gave her shimmering makeup and an assortment of whimsical tattoos. Beneath Mona Lisa‘s collarbone is typography that reads, “Timeless,” and an illustration of Adam and God’s hands from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. Then, on her bare shoulder is an image of a square in a circle and the phrase, “OG Muse.”
“At first I wasn’t planning on publishing it and keeping it to myself like many other artworks, (I knew some people could find it disrespectful for the tattoos and so on) but I don’t know why I went ahead and posted it,” Moons tells us. “It got a pretty good response regardless and people motivated me to paint the Girl With a Pearl Earring, and by now I have plans on keeping up with the series!” Just like the Mona Lisa fan art, the artist updated the clothing and hairstyle of the Girl With a Pearl Earring. So, instead of Vermeer’s yellow headdress, this modern version sports a stylish high pony. She also wears sparkling makeup and a tiny heart tattoo underneath her eye.
You can commission your own digital portrait by visiting Moons’ website, and keep up to date with the artist’s latest creations by following her on Instagram.
Similarly, Moons reimagined the Girl With a Pearl Earring with glittery makeup and a high ponytail.
WASHINGTON — Michelle Obama had one message for Americans at Monday night’s Democratic National Convention: “If you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election.” It was a dire warning, but it captured the essence of a speech marked by a sense of urgency and bleak realism.
The former first lady painted a picture of what she said young people, including her two daughters, see around them in America today.
“They see people shouting in grocery stores, unwilling to wear a mask to keep us all safe,” Obama said in the prerecorded speech. “They see an entitlement that says only certain people belong here, that greed is good, and winning is everything because as long as you come out on top, it doesn’t matter what happens to everyone else.”
“Sadly, this is the America that is on display for the next generation,” she said. “That’s not just disappointing; it’s downright infuriating.”
Obama has long been admired on both sides of the aisle for her ability to deliver inspiring and motivating speeches. To this day, she remains one of the most sought-after campaign surrogates in all of politics.
But if viewers tuned into the Democratic convention Monday expecting to see the same warm, welcoming, “mom-in-chief” version of Michelle Obama they had grown accustomed to during her eight years in the White House, they were in for a wake-up call.
Obama herself seemed to acknowledge this, describing how she reframes one of her best-known phrases, “when they go low, we go high,” when people ask her today how to “go high” in the face of a president like Donald Trump.
“Going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top,” Obama said.
“Going high means standing fierce against hatred. … And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.”
Trump responded to Obama’s speech on Twitter Tuesday morning.
“Somebody please explain to @MichelleObama that Donald J. Trump would not be here, in the beautiful White House, if it weren’t for the job done by your husband, Barack Obama,” the president wrote.
The purpose of this week’s convention is to nominate, and ostensibly celebrate, the party’s presidential ticket of former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris. But Obama didn’t even mention Biden until halfway into her speech.
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and vice presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris are seen at the stage during a campaign event, their first joint appearance since Biden named Harris as his running mate, at Alexis Dupont High School in Wilmington, Delaware, August 12, 2020. Carlos Barria | Reuters
After praising Biden for his empathy and fortitude, she said: “Now, Joe is not perfect. And he’d be the first to tell you that. But there is no perfect candidate, no perfect president.”
Obama didn’t mention Harris, who is the first Black woman ever nominated to a major party ticket. Obama’s speech was reportedly taped before Biden announced Harris as his running mate on Tuesday.
Obama also warned that voter suppression tactics are already underway. “Right now, folks who know they cannot win fair and square at the ballot box are doing everything they can to stop us from voting. They’re closing down polling places in minority neighborhoods. They’re purging voter rolls. They’re sending people out to intimidate voters, and they’re lying about the security of our ballots,” she said.
Her warning echoed remarks her husband, former President Barack Obama, had made about voter suppression during his recent eulogy for the late civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis of Georgia.
“If we want to keep the possibility of progress alive in our time, if we want to be able to look our children in the eye after this election, we have got to reassert our place in American history,” the former first lady said in the last lines of her speech. “And we have got to do everything we can to elect my friend, Joe Biden, as the next president of the United States.”
Her husband is scheduled to deliver the convention keynote on Wednesday.
