Chandler West for Hillary For America(WASHINGTON) — First lady Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton took the stage together for the first time in this election at an early-vote rally in North Carolina Thursday.
The Clinton campaign has described Obama as its “not-so-secret weapon” on the trail as she’s crisscrossed the country campaigning for the former secretary of state.
“Tt doesn’t get any better than being here with our most amazing first lady,” Clinton said to the crowd at the event at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem.
The Democratic presidential nominee continued that Michelle Obama’s voice is needed now more than ever because “this may be one of the most important elections of our lifetime.”
“She has spent eight years as our first lady advocating for girls around the world to go to school and have the same opportunities as boys,” Clinton said to cheers and applause. She has worked for healthier child hoots for our kids here at home,
Clinton also praised Obama’s work on issues concerning child health and nutrition, higher education and veterans.
“We actually are seeing kids who are healthier, something that she was determined to try to achieve,” the presidential candidate said. “She’s encouraged more young people to go to college and follow your dreams, and she has supported America’s military families who serve and sacrifice as well for our country.”
Clinton also complimented the first lady on her appearance on The Late Show with James Corden‘s ‘Carpool Karaoke’ and her White House vegetable garden.
“Seriously, is there anyone more inspiring than Michelle Obama?” Clinton said.
The first lady, who has tried to stay out of the political fray during her husband’s presidency, enjoys one of the highest approval ratings among Democratic figures in the country. A recent Fox News poll found she received a 59 percent positive rating overall and a 95 percent favorable rating among Democrats.
Now, she is one of Clinton’s top surrogates.
“She has exceeded our expectations in terms of how many events she has been able to do, willing to do. Her team keeps surprising us with additional availability and we can’t, from our vantage point, we can’t get her out there enough. She’s been an absolute rock star,” Clinton campaign Press Secretary Brian Fallon said earlier this week.
Obama wowed Democrats with her speech on the first night of the Democratic National Convention, even prompting Clinton to incorporate one of her lines into her stump speech — “When they go low, we go high.”
The first lady has delivered some of the most effective criticisms of Donald Trump, often without even naming him. In New Hampshire last month, she offered a stinging critique of the Republican presidential nominee after a 2005 video surfaced in which he made lewd comments about women.
“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual,” Obama said. “This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to.
“No woman deserves to be treated this way — none of us deserves this kind of abuse,” she added.
The relationship between Obama and Clinton has evolved since the bruising 2008 presidential primary. During an interview with ABC News at the time, Obama declined to say whether she would vote for Clinton if her husband weren’t running for president.
“I’d have to think about that,” she said. “I’d have to think about that, her policies, her approach, her tone.”
Trump, however, preemptively downplayed her barbs in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos. “Look, what is she going to say? Is she going to say I’m fantastic?” Trump asked.
“Is she going to say, ‘Trump is better at that than any other human being in the world,’ OK, which I believe I am,” he said.
The target of the first lady’s criticism is obvious, including her remarks about the “hurtful, deceitful” birther theory that Trump popularized and his “locker-room talk” defense for a 2005 recording on which he apparently boasts of groping women without their consent.
“If a candidate is erratic and threatening, if a candidate traffics in prejudice, fear and lies on the campaign trail, if a candidate thinks that not paying taxes makes you smart or that it’s good business when people lose their homes, if a candidate regularly and flippantly makes cruel and insulting comments about women — about how we look, how we act — well, sadly, that’s who that candidate really is,” Obama said in one of her earlier campaign speeches in Pennsylvania.
“Look, she’s the first lady,” he told ABC News. “She’s got to say what she’s got to say. I mean, I understand that. That’s the game,” he told ABC News.
Trump did bring up a comment that Obama made during the 2008 presidential primaries.
“One of the things, the important aspects of this race, is role modeling what good families should look like. And my view is that if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House,” Obama said at an event in August 2007, according to Politifact.
Some viewed that as a veiled swipe at the Clintons, though shortly after Michelle made that comment, Barack Obama told reporters “there was no reference beyond her point that we have had an administration that talks a lot about family values but doesn’t follow through.”
Trump dismissed the idea that Michelle was taking about her own family.
“Oh come on. Look, you know better than that,” Trump said to ABC News on Wednesday.
“That was during the campaign,” Trump said of the statement. “She said about Hillary Clinton, ‘You can’t take care of your own house,’ meaning Bill Clinton, ‘Then how you can take care of the White House?’ It was a vicious statement. It was covered at the time. And it’s gone all over the world,” Trump said.
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