Michelle Obama slams Trump in new book

WASHINGTON: Former US first lady Michelle Obama says she can “never forgive” Donald Trump for questioning her husband’s American citizenship, saying the president and other “birthers” put her family at risk, in her hotly anticipated new memoir.

Obama also says she was surprised that so many American women voted for the “misogynist” Trump over Hillary Clinton, “an exceptionally qualified female candidate,” in the 2016 election. The book, “Becoming,” hits stores on Tuesday. Obama, 54, will head out on a multi-city arena tour to promote the memoir, with celebrity friends like Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon tapped to moderate the events. It is one of the most awaited books about US politics in years, and Obama does not mince words about her husband’s successor — and his involvement in promoting the idea that Barack Obama was born abroad. “The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed,” she writes, in excerpts of the book published by ABC News and The Washington Post.

“But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks,” she adds. “What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls?

“Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him.” Obama also said her body “buzzed with fury” after hearing the “Access Hollywood” tape on which Trump bragged about being able to grab women with impunity. Trump did not waste time in responding. “Michelle Obama got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always insist you come up with controversy. I’ll give you some back,” he told reporters at the White House before heading on a trip to France. “I’ll never forgive him for what he did to our United States military by not funding it properly. (...) What he did to our military made this country unsafe.”