Former first lady Michelle Obama presents the Arthur Ashe Courage Award at the ESPYS in July. —Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Former First Lady Michelle Obama criticized women who voted for President Donald Trump during a wide-ranging conversation in Boston Wednesday that addressed life in the White House, her forthcoming book, and the challenges of discrimination that women face together.

“Any woman who voted against Hillary Clinton voted against their own voice,” Obama told the audience during a question-and-answer session with author Roxane Gay at Inbound, a marketing conference that has attracted an assortment of famous speakers this week.

Obama maintained that she and her husband, former President Barack Obama, still support Trump and want him to be successful.

She also countered critics of the Affordable Care Act, which Republicans are still trying, unsuccessfully, to repeal.

“The Affordable Care Act isn’t Barack’s legacy,” she said. “It’s the country’s legacy.”

Obama said she doesn’t miss being in the White House, though she does miss the “people and the work.” The process taught her that she can do anything, she told the audience.

“It was like being shot out of a cannon…with a blindfold and the spotlight on you,” she said when asked what it was like as First Lady.


Obama said she’s amazed to think that her daughters, Malia and Sasha, spent their most formative years living in the White House. She said they’re typical teenagers who don’t want to do much with their parents.

“‘Do you want to come down and meet Paul McCartney?’ ‘No Ma, no,'” she joked, describing a typical conversation with her kids.

To her disbelief, her daughters wanted to have a sleepover on their final night in the White House.

“‘The Trumps are coming!'” she recalled telling them.

Obama said she’s working on a book about believing in our most authentic selves. It will include stories about her childhood: “How did that little girl get to be here?”

She offered eloquent words of wisdom for people who are struggling to find their own voices.

“How many of us have sat in a classroom somewhere and watched a man go on and on and on?” she told the women in the audience.

The conversation took a lighter turn at the end of the conversation when she was asked about her favorite song on Beyonce’s Lemonade album, to which she replied, “all of them.” But, she added, Love Drought is the song she played “over and over.”


Ellen Biewald contributed reporting to this story.