CNN’s Tapper: Michelle Obama Is the One of ‘Most Effective Speakers in America Politics Today’

Monday on CNN, anchor Jake Tapper commented on former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech closing the first night of the Democratic convention.

Tapper said, “First of all, before I get to any of the content, we should just acknowledge that the former first lady is one of the most effective speakers in American politics today. She was reading that from a teleprompter, and the way she speaks is, you know, strong enough to give any politician a run for his or her money. In fact, if I can be so bold, she’s a more effective speaker than Vice President Joe Biden is when reading from a teleprompter.”

He continued, “But beyond that, we’ve never heard this country, a former first lady or current first lady, speak this starkly about the candidate that she is not supporting. She painted, first of all, a very dystopian picture of the United States, and I know there are people out there who probably recognize that dystopia right now. ”

He added, “It’s just not the kind of thing you hear first ladies talk about. She talked about white supremacists bearing torches and children being stripped from their families and thrown in cages, tear gas and rubber bullets for a photo op, all stories we lived through and can remember, but it’s not the kind of picture that a first lady is known to make. The other thing I would say is her criticisms of President Trump were not about his policies. They were about his lack of character. She talked about chaos, she talked about division, she alluded to racism. She talked about his lack of empathy. She noted, ‘the wrong president for our time.’ He was in over his head. He simply cannot be who we need him to be. Then she used Trump’s own words, you might remember in that “Axios” interview, he said, ‘it is what it is,’ referring to the now 170,000 dead Americans we have due to coronavirus, and Michelle Obama used those words against him. ‘It is what it is’ describing him. Really, it’s an historic speech in any regard, both in terms of the scene she painted of the United States right now, and also what she had to say about the current president of the United States.”

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