Former first lady Michelle Obama has some choice words for President Trump in her new book “Becoming” which will be released Tuesday. The Associated Press reported Friday that Obama accused Trump of stalking Hillary Clinton during a debate through his “body language.” She also said she would “never forgive” him over his birtherism comments.
She accused Trump of stalking Clinton through body language during an election debate because he followed her around the stage and stood nearby "trying to diminish her presence."
Obama emphasized that Trump’s message was "I can hurt you and get away with it.”
This refrain of “stalking” during an October 2016 presidential debate was something the Clinton campaign initially claimed and was subsequently taken up by many on the left.
“This is not OK, I thought,” Clinton wrote in her memoir a year later. “It was the second presidential debate and Donald Trump was looming behind me.”
“We were on a small stage and no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled,” she said.
Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) has also argued that Trump “stalked Hillary Clinton.”
Obama expresses shock in her book over the fact that many women chose a "misogynist" over Clinton, who she considered "an exceptionally qualified female candidate."
While Obama has largely refrained from criticizing Trump, she did compare his presidency to "bad parenting" in April and speculated that the reason Clinton lost was that “people weren’t comfortable voting for a woman sadly.”
Obama also addressed President Trump’s “birther” comments questioning her husband’s citizenship.
"The whole thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed," she wrote. "But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks."
“What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington?” she asked. “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."
President Trump responded to that criticism Friday morning, telling reporters, "she got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always expect a little controversy."
"I'll give you a little controversy back, I'll never forgive (President Barack Obama) for what he did to our US military," he added. "It was depleted, and I had to fix it. What he did to our military made this country very unsafe for you and you and you."