Michelle Obama reveals dread of Trump and how news cycle 'turns her stomach'

Michelle Obama has told of her dismay that so many American women chose “misogynist” Donald Trump as their president instead of the first female nominee of a major party, Hillary Clinton. In her new memoir, Becoming, which is published on Tuesday, the former first lady admits that some news stories now “turn her stomach” and, as her husband Barack Obama’s legacy is aggressively unravelled, sometimes wonders “where the bottom might be”. The couple spent election night 2016 at the cinema in the White House. “As the movie wrapped up and the lights came on, Barack’s cell phone buzzed,” Obama writes. “I saw him glance at it and then look again, his brow furrowing just slightly. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Results in Florida are looking kind of strange.’ ‘I wanted everything’ – read an exclusive extract from Michelle Obama’s memoir, Becoming Read more “There was no alarm in his voice, just a tiny seed of awareness, a hot ember glowing suddenly in the grass. The phone buzzed again. My heart started to tick faster … I watched my husband’s face closely, not sure I was ready to hear what he was going to say. Whatever it was, it didn’t look good. I felt something leaden take hold in my stomach just then, my anxiety hardening into dread.” Obama could not bring herself to stay up through the early hours watching the climax on TV. She went to bed, hoping to “block it all out.” As she slept, the stunning news was confirmed: Trump would succeed her husband as president. She admits: “I wanted to not know that fact for as long as I possibly could.” The couple’s daughters, Malia, who was in Bolivia, and Sasha, who went off to school in Washington, were both “deeply rattled” by the result, she recalls. “I told both our girls that I loved them and that things would be okay. I kept trying to tell myself the same thing.” The former first lady, now 54, refrains from second guessing whether Russian meddling, FBI director James Comey’s intervention or flaws in Clinton’s campaigns brought about Clinton’s loss. She admits: “I am not a political person, so I’m not going to attempt to offer an analysis of the results. I won’t try to speculate about who was responsible or what was unfair.