Upon hearing the notion that Michelle Obama may be the presidential candidate for Democrats in 2024, many Republicans reflexively recite the mantra that she is enjoying her life and is not political.  Let me make one thing clear: Michelle Obama is a political animal.  Republicans must quickly begin to prepare for her candidacy.

Michelle grew up as the daughter of a Chicago Democrat party precinct captain.  She has written about making the rounds with her father from age 4, visiting homes in her area to get out the black vote for the white liberal Chicago Democrat party machine.  Michelle has also noted that people came to her house seeking money from her father, Fraser Robinson.  In high school, Michelle was elected repeatedly to the student council and was class treasurer.  Michelle befriended Santita Jackson, the daughter of Jesse Jackson, and has said, “I grew up in that man’s house.”  Yes, Michelle spent much time at Jesse Jackson’s house while he was preparing to run for president.  “I’ve seen it all,” Michelle said of the experience.

At Princeton University, Michelle was elected to the board of the Third World Center, a radical black activist fraternity.  Michelle and Barack had a mutual professor at Harvard, though in different years, named Charles Ogletree.  When Barack was elected president, Ogletree told TMZ that between Barack and Michelle, he would have thought Michelle more likely to run for president.

In Chicago, Michelle befriended another political animal, the former head of the Weather Underground domestic terrorist group and accused cop-killer Bernardine Dohrn.  Michelle worked with her for two years at the Sidley Austin law firm and had dinners at her home with Bill Ayers for years, right up until the time Barack ran for U.S. Senate in 2004.  Dohrn was Michelle’s first guest speaker at Public Allies, the community organizing group she ran.  Yes, like Barack, Michelle was also a community organizer for three years.  In marrying a politician, she married her father.

On the 2008 campaign trail, Michelle spoke to huge adoring crowds across the country, trumpeting word for word the anti-American rhetoric she’d learned from Dohrn.  The media largely ignored the nastiness until Michelle proclaimed, upon Barack winning a primary, “For the first time in my life, I’m proud of my country.”  This earned Michelle a Republican and media backlash.  The next day, she hired a speechwriter and declared, “I hate politics.  I just want to be the mom in chief.”  This earned Michelle an immediate respite and reshaped Michelle’s public persona from a highly political anti-American radical into a mom who hates politics.

To a degree, Michelle was being truthful.  All politicians hate politics — it’s grueling and annoying — but they put up with it because they love power.

With this context, you can understand why I researched Michelle Obama’s true life history and published the film and book of the same name, Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power.  Seeing Joe Biden’s advanced age, immense unpopularity, and terrible polls, Democrat party leaders such as Barack Obama and David Axelrod have observed that Biden is likely going to lose to Trump.  In the wings, however, waits the very political Michelle Obama.  Lucky for us, she let it all hang out when she tweeted a two-part statement on January 7, 2021, one day after “January 6.”  Interestingly, on the day following this statement, the tech companies did what Michelle asked them to do: ban Donald Trump from social media.  

Michelle’s January 7 Twitter manifesto deserves to be read in full.  Can there be any doubt that Michelle Obama is a political animal who has her sights on the White House in 2024?

Michelle Obama, January 7, 2021:

I woke up yesterday elated by the news of Reverend Raphael Warnock's election victory. He'll be Georgia's first Black senator, and I was heartened by the idea that the Senior Pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church—the home parish of Dr. King and a spiritual and organizational hub during the Civil Rights Movement—would be representing his state in the United States Senate.

In just a few hours, though, my heart had fallen harder and faster than I can remember. Like all of you, I watched as a gang—organized, violent, and mad they'd lost an election—laid siege to the United States Capitol. They set up gallows. They proudly waved the traitorous flag of the Confederacy through the halls. They desecrated the center of American government. And once authorities finally gained control of the situation, these rioters and gang members were led out of the building not in handcuffs, but free to carry on with their days. The day was a fulfillment of the wishes of an infantile and unpatriotic president who can't handle the truth of his own failures. 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.

It all left me with so many questions—questions about the future, questions about security, extremism, propaganda, and more. But there's one question I just can't shake: What if these rioters had looked like the folks who go to Ebenezer Baptist Church every Sunday? What would have been different?

I think we all know the answer. This summer's Black Lives Matter protests were an overwhelmingly peaceful movement—our nation's largest demonstrations ever, bringing together people of every race and class and encouraging millions to re-examine their own assumptions and behavior. And yet, in city after city, day after day, we saw peaceful protestors met with brute force. We saw cracked skulls and mass arrests, law enforcement pepper spraying its way through a peaceful demonstration for a presidential photo op.

And for those who call others unpatriotic for simply taking a knee in silent protest, for those who wonder why we need to be reminded that Black Lives Matter at all, yesterday made it painfully clear that certain Americans are, in fact, allowed to denigrate the flag and symbols of our nation. They've just got to look the right way. What do all those folks have to say now?

Seeing the gulf between the responses to yesterday's riot and this summer's peaceful protests and the larger movement for racial justice is so painful. It hurts. And I cannot think about moving on or turning the page until we reckon with the reality of what we saw yesterday. True progress will be possible only once we acknowledge that this disconnect exists and take steps to repair it. And that also means coming to grips with the reality that millions voted for a man so obviously willing to burn our democracy down for his own ego.

I hurt for our country. And I wish I had all the solutions to make things better. I wish I had the confidence that people who know better will act like it for more than a news cycle or two. All I know is that now is a time for true patriotism. Now is the time for those who voted for this president to see the reality of what they've supported—and publicly and forcefully rebuke him and the actions of that mob. 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.

And if we have any hope of improving this nation, now is the time for swift and serious consequences for the failure of leadership that led to yesterday's shame.

Thankfully, even in the darkness, there are glimmers of hope. It's something I imagine Reverend Warnock has preached about before—and I'm still heartened beyond belief that he's headed to Washington. I'm glad his fellow Georgian, Jon Ossoff is, too, and that together they'll help give control of Congress back to the only party that's shown that it can put our democracy above its own short-term political fortunes. I pray that every American, especially those who disagree with them, will give our new Congress, President-Elect Biden, and Vice-President-Elect Harris the chance to lead us in a better direction.

But make no mistake: The work of putting America back together, of truly repairing what is broken, isn't the work of any individual politician or political party. It's up to each of us to do our part. To reach out. To listen. And to hold tight to the truth and values that have always led this country forward. It will be an uncomfortable, sometimes painful process. But if we enter into it with an honest and unwavering love of our country, then maybe we can finally start to heal.

Hollywood film director Joel Gilbert is president of Highway 61 Entertainment.  Among his many films are political documentaries including The Trayvon Hoax: Unmasking the Witness Fraud that Divided America; Trump: The Art of the Insult; There's No Place Like Utopia; Dreams from My Real Father; Atomic Jihad; and Farewell Israel: Bush, Iran and the Revolt of Islam and the new film and book Michelle Obama 2024: Her Real Life Story and Plan for Power.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.