Nine days after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election (opens in new tab), President Donald Trump has yet to officially welcome the Bidens to the White House. Despite this, President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are moving forward with the transition process by creating a formal website (opens in new tab) outlining their immediate priorities amid the COVID-19 pandemic that has claimed more than 245,000 American lives.

As the days go by, people are urging the country's leaders, especially the president's Republican allies, to facilitate a smooth transition of power for the country. Former first lady Michelle Obama is one of them. In an Instagram post published Monday afternoon (opens in new tab), she described her experience welcoming then-President-elect Donald Trump and his wife Melania Trump to the White House in 2016 after Trump made racist remarks about her husband, President Barack Obama. She revealed.

"To be honest, none of this was easy for me," she wrote (opens in new tab). She wrote: "Donald Trump spread racist lies about my husband and put my family in danger. I was not willing to forgive that. But I knew I had to find the strength and maturity to put my anger aside for the sake of our country."

This post is an urgent reminder that democracy, regardless of political ideology or personal beliefs, depends on a peaceful transition of power. Read the full text of her post below: