Former first lady Michelle Obama has remained somewhat tight-lipped about President Trump since the 2016 presidential election, but in her new memoir, she doesn't hold back.
In Becoming, which will be released on Nov. 13, Obama says Trump's false conspiracy theory that her husband, former President Barack Obama, was not born in the United States was "crazy and mean-spirited," with its "bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed," but these "loud and reckless innuendos" were also "deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks." Obama says this made her fear for her family's safety because "someone with an unstable mind" could drive to Washington with a loaded gun and try to harm her daughters. "And for this I'd never forgive him," Obama writes of Trump, according to an excerpt published by The Washington Post.
Trump spent years promoting birtherism, at one point saying he had information from an "extremely credible" source that could prove Obama's birth certificate was fake, but he never offered up this supposed proof. He finally admitted in a press conference in September 2016 that Obama was, in fact, born in the United States, but never apologized or said he was wrong.
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Obama also recalls in Becoming her shock at the 2016 election result, saying she could not believe that a "misogynist" would be elected over Hillary Clinton, whom she calls an "exceptionally qualified female candidate," per The Associated Press. She says she tried to block out memories of the election, and she recalls that her body "buzzed with fury" after she heard the Access Hollywood tape, on which Trump bragged about groping women without their consent. Obama says that what Trump was essentially saying on tape was, "I can hurt you and get away with it."
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