News
Joanna Taylor
Aug 18, 2020
Michelle Obama kicked off the Democratic National Convention with fierce criticism of Donald Trump and an impassioned call to vote for Joe Biden.
During the first day of online speeches, she told voters:
Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country.
He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.
She then added:
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.
If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.
But just five words of Obama's speech caught everyone's attention.
"It is what it is."
The moment has already been made into a gif.
And people compared it to this iconic vine.
So why are people obsessed with the "it is what it is" line?
Some people were impressed by how effortlessly Obama's simple turn of phrase skewered Trump's last four years in office.
And the phrase also has particular resonance for Black Twitter.
Some people interpreted it as a callback to Trump saying "it is what it is" about the US's coronavirus death toll.
That callous moment made its way into a Democrat political advert earlier this month.
While others joked that it might make its way into one of Melania Trump's speeches.
The first lady was accused of plagiarising Michelle Obama after people noticed familiar phrasing in her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2016.
Republican senator Lindsey Graham has already tried to turn the phrase back on the Democrats, but people weren't having it.
(Yes, that tweet is real.)
Sorry Graham, but this is Michelle Obama's moment and we're all just living in it.
It is what it is.
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