*Former first lady Michelle Obama served up a candid interview with “Good Morning America” co-anchor Robin Roberts ahead of the Tuesday release of her highly anticipated memoir “Becoming,” and she shared the vital advice she’d give her pre-White House self if she could travel back in time.
“You know the hard parts were the things that I expected,” Michelle Obama told Roberts in the exclusive interview.
“That it was gonna be hard, you know? Being the first black anything is gonna be hard.”
“So much of this country lives in isolation and we just don’t know each other. … There were people who didn’t know what a black woman was and sounded like. And, so I knew that was gonna be a challenge, that I’d have to earn my grace — and I experienced that on the campaign trail,” she said.
Obama and Roberts’ conversation covered a range of topics including Michelle’s miscarriage, going through IVF, Donald Trump Obama’s candidacy for president.
Watch the clip below.
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She also explained that when she saw her husband on the cover of Time magazine in October 2006 with the headline, “Why Barack Obama could be the next president,” she couldn’t bring herself to read it.
“I think I did what a lot of black folks were doing,” she told Roberts. “We were afraid to hope because it’s hard to believe that the country that oppressed you could one day be led by you, you know?”
Michelle shared that while she totally supported Barack’s run for the presidency, she didn’t think he’d win.
“I mean, my grandparents, you know, lived through segregation,” she continued. “My grandfather, his grandfather was a slave, you know? So this, these memories were real. And they didn’t think the country was ready. And, and so my attitude was a reflection of that skepticism.”
On the campaign trail, she was insulted and her patriotism was questioned.
“I write about those, you know, those nasty times where people, you know, called me Barack’s ‘baby mama,’ you know? Accused me of not loving my country. … Told me I was angry,” she said. And, I was, like, ‘This isn’t me. Wait, wait, people. This isn’t who I am.'”
As reported by abcnews.go.com, Obama admitted to Roberts that the criticism she endured during her husband’s campaign hurt.
“I don’t think we do each other a service by pretending like hurtful things don’t hurt,” she told Roberts.
“And, that’s what I’ve come to. … I need to own that hurt. I need to talk about it. I need to put it out there for myself so that I can heal from it. But at the time, oh gosh, you know? I wasn’t gonna allow myself to feel victimized from it because there was no time to hurt in that role.”
As we previously reported, Michelle Obama heavily criticized Donald Trump in her much-anticipated memoir, “Becoming,” and says he jeopardized her family’s safety by propagating the false ‘birther’ conspiracy theory.
“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,” she writes. “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.”
Trump responded Friday to Obama’s comments by pointing the finger at his predecessor.
“She got paid a lot of money to write a book and they always expect a little controversy,” Trump told reporters. “I’ll give you a little controversy back, I’ll never forgive [President Barack Obama] for what he did to our U.S. military. 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,” he added.
Roberts’ candid conversation with Obama aired during a primetime ABC News special, “Becoming Michelle: A First Lady’s Journey with Robin Roberts,” on Sunday ( Nov. 11).
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