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Former First Lady Michelle Obama’s office shut down reports on Tuesday morning that she intends to run for president.
Obama’s office shared a statement with NBC News and made it clear that the former first lady has no interest in running for the executive office.
“As former First Lady Michelle Obama has expressed several times over the years, she will not be running for president,” Crystal Carson, director of communications for the former first lady’s office, said. “Mrs. Obama supports President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ re-election campaign.”
Although the former first lady will probably have a smaller role than she did in the 2020 election, Michelle Obama still plans to assist Biden in winning re-election in 2024, according to NBC.
According to the outlet, the Biden campaign intends to capitalize on Michelle Obama’s standing with Democratic voters to boost turnout in 2024.
Kevin Munoz, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, claimed that the Obamas were “enormously helpful” in helping Biden win the presidency in 2020.
“President and Michelle Obama were enormously helpful in the fight to beat Donald Trump and elect President Biden and Vice President Harris the first time and we are grateful to have their voice and their support in the fight for the fate of our democracy this November,” Munoz said in a statement.
Michelle Obama’s office says the former first lady ‘will not be running for president’ in 2024 https://t.co/WWOiBuKGlf
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) March 5, 2024
An Obama aide referred to her conversation with Oprah last year to explain why she would most likely never run for office herself.
“Politics is hard,” Michelle Obama said in the Netflix special. “And the people who get into it—you’ve got to want it. It’s got to be in your soul because it is so important. It is not in my soul.”
Michelle Obama said during a 2022 interview on the BBC that she “detests” questions about running for president.
Speculation about Michelle Obama possibly running for president has been rampant for years.
During a 2020 interview on CNN, anchor Alisyn Camerota speculatively asked Jill Biden, “Maybe former first lady Michelle Obama?” amid conjecture about Biden’s possible running mate.
Jill Biden laughed. “You know, I’d love it if Michelle would agree to it. But I — you know, I think she’s had it with politics. I don’t know. She’s so good at everything she does. That would — that would be wonderful,” she said.
All of this comes as polling is not well for President Joe Biden.
Younger voters have long been supporters of Democrats, for the most part, but in the age of President Joe Biden, that appears to be changing.
In yet another survey, Biden is losing younger voters under 30 to former President Donald Trump ahead of the 2024 elections.
Fox News published a poll on Sunday that found 51 percent of voters younger than 30 years old plan to vote for Trump in November, while only 45 percent said they intend to support Biden, Newsweek reported, adding that is a sizeable shift from 2020 when Biden easily won the lion’s share of younger voters.
Biden and Trump are both on track to win their respective presidential primaries, potentially setting the stage for a rematch between them in November.
However, recent polls have revealed potentially concerning developments for Biden, indicating fissures within the coalition that propelled him to the White House less than four years ago.
The president is currently grappling with questions regarding his declining support among young voters, a demographic that generally leans progressive but has encountered problems with some of Biden’s policies.
Many young voters have also voiced disillusionment with the prospect of a Biden-Trump rematch, calling for a fresh generation of leadership.
But that said, the Fox News poll is just the latest to show younger voters shifting away from Biden and towards Trump.
Trump, for his part, has continued to woo voting blocs that traditionally lean towards Democrats, and he did so again in a column published last fall aimed at younger voters.
The Newsweek op-ed followed a survey indicating Trump’s increasing support from a younger voting demographic that typically leans towards Democrats more than Biden. In his piece, Trump drew comparisons between the outcomes of his economic policies and those of Biden, contending that young voters fared better under his leadership.
