The first lady spoke at a Clinton rally in New Hampshire on Thursday, calling past comments and alleged misconduct by the Republican nominee ‘frightening’

Michelle Obama on Thursday delivered a devastating rebuke to Donald Trump, calling past comments and alleged misconduct by the Republican nominee “cruel”, “frightening” and beyond the “basic standards of human decency”.

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As Trump prepared to respond to a wave of women who had stepped forward in the previous 24 hours to accuse him of sexual misconduct, the first lady took the stage in Manchester, New Hampshire, at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton.

“I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” Obama said, her voice trembling as she addressed a university gymnasium filled with several hundred people. “And I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.”

In visceral terms and with a heightened sense of urgency, Obama painted the choice for president as a moral imperative.



“This is not normal, this is not politics as usual,” she said. “This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to. ... No woman deserves to be treated this way – none of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

The Trump campaign was rocked last week by the publication of a live microphone recording from 2005, in which Trump boasted in explicit terms about kissing and groping women without their consent. The nominee dismissed the tape as “locker room banter” and denied during the second presidential debate on Sunday that he had ever done what he boasted of.

Obama did not accept his response.

“This wasn’t just a lewd conversation,” she said. “This wasn’t just locker room banter. This was a powerful individual speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior and actually bragging about kissing and groping women, using language so obscene that many of us are worried about our children hearing it when we turn on the TV.

“To make matters worse, it now seems very clear that this isn’t an isolated incident. It’s one of countless examples of how he has treated women his whole life.”

The New Hampshire rally was Obama’s sixth campaign event for Clinton. The ever-popular first lady has proved to be one of the Democratic candidate’s most powerful surrogates, after delivering a smash-hit speech at the party convention in July.

On Thursday, Obama told the crowd she had planned to deliver her normal campaign speech, but said it would have been “dishonest and disingenuous” to do so, as she felt compelled to address Trump’s remarks on women. She never referred to Trump by name, instead calling him “her opponent” or simply the Republican “candidate”. She did not turn to discuss Clinton until halfway through her remarks.

Obama implored voters repulsed by the coarseness of the presidential campaign to consider the impact a Trump presidency would have on young girls and boys – and the message it would send to the world.

“If you vote for someone other than Hillary, or you don’t vote, you are helping to elect her opponent,” she said. “Imagine how that will feel.”

She continued: “We need to recover from our shock and depression and do what women have always done in this country. We need you to roll up your sleeves, we need to get to work.”



Later on Thursday, Clinton tweeted her praise, saying she was “in awe” of Obama’s words.