Michelle Obama has spoken out in a new book about the deep hurt and disappointment she felt when Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election.
“I was deeply shocked to hear the man who replaced my husband as president openly and unapologetically use ethnic slurs, make selfishness and hatred somehow acceptable, refuse to condemn white supremacists or support people protesting for racial justice,” Obama wrote in “The Light.” We Carry,” a copy of which was obtained by CNN. “It shocked me to hear him talk about diversity as if it were a threat.”
Audio excerpts from the book premiered Monday on NPR.
Obama wrote that she and Barack Obama had built their principles on “hope and hard work” and that she was confused when the country chose to elect Trump.
“For eight years, we have tried to live these principles out loud, recognizing that we have succeeded in spite of and perhaps even in defiance of the bigotry and prejudice so deeply embedded in American life,” said Michelle Obama. “We realized that being Black in the White House said something about what was possible. So we redoubled our hope and our hard work, trying to inhabit this possibility.”
“Whether or not the 2016 election was a direct rebuke of all that, it hurt. It still hurts,” he said. “It felt like something more, something much worse than just a political defeat.”
“Stuck in my house, in the terrifying months of the early 2020s, I saw no logic in any of this,” Obama said, detailing how he sank into a deep hopelessness. “What I saw was a president whose lack of integrity was reflected in an escalating national death count and whose poll numbers were still decent.”
Obama also told how she was scared when Barack Obama first told her he wanted to run for president.
“I found the prospect really terrifying,” she said, describing how it took her time to come to terms with the decision. “I could change the course of history because of my fear. Instead I said yes.”
Obama’s new book, out on Tuesday, is a guide and a reflection on how he dealt with the last few years, how he overcame despair and anxiety and rebuilt hope for the future. Her first memoir, Becoming, was released in 2018, selling more than 17 million copies worldwide, making it one of the best-selling books of all time.
