In her book, entitled “Becoming,” former first lady Michelle Obama took a swipe at America's 45th president, writing that she stopped “even trying to smile” when Donald Trump was being sworn into office in January 2017.
“Someone from Barack’s administration might have said that the optics there were bad – that what the public saw didn’t reflect the president’s reality or ideals. But in this case, maybe it did. Realising it, I made my own optic adjustment: I stopped even trying to smile,” she said, referring to Trump’s inauguration speech.
She also claimed that she would “never forgive” Trump for spreading the “birther” conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and therefore ineligible to be elected US president.
“The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed. 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? 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,” she wrote.
The book has caused quite a stir on social media, with many users saying that it was based on “distorted and politically motivated thoughts”:
…and saying that they wouldn’t “pay a penny” to for the memoir:
Another user suggested that she should stop with the drama and “get over it”:
Other Twitterians added that they wouldn’t purchase the book due to the fact that it was largely focused on bashing Trump, and that eight years of the Obama era was too much for them:
Some pointed out to the fact that mainstream media called Michelle’s memoir “one of the most anticipated political books,” and claimed that reading, for instance, the back of a ketchup bottle would be more intriguing:
Reacting to the claims in the book, Trump accused Michelle of trying to boost book sales with controversy:
“She got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always insist that you come up with controversy. I’ll give you a little controversy back, I’ll never forgive [Obama] for what he did to our US military. It was depleted… and I had to fix it.”
Michelle has launched the promotional tour of her book on Tuesday at Chicago’s United Center, where thousands of people purchased tickets to attend the event, which was moderated by media mogul Oprah Winfrey.