Michelle Obama admits Trump victory ‘still hurts’

Six years after her husband Barak Obama left the presidency to be replaced by Donald Trump, Michelle Obama admitted she still feels the pain of that moment. After she and her husband had “laid a marker in the sand” and revived hope that anyone – regardless of their colour – could rise to the highest office in the land, Donald Trump took over in what political scientists have described as a conservative backlash. In her “darkest” moments, the former First Lady confessed she sometimes questions whether they did more harm than good.Michelle Obama made the revelations in her new memoir, The Light We Carry, and confessed on BBC News that Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election to replace her husband Barack Obama “still hurts”. Asked if the pain was there, Michelle Obama said: “And it still hurts. “But that point in time when you have to ask yourself: ‘Was it worth it?'”Did we make a dent? Did it matter? And when I’m in my darkest moments, my most irrational place, I could say, ‘Well maybe not’, ‘Maybe we weren’t good enough’.”But then I look around when there is more clarity … and think more rationally, I think well … today there’s a whole world of young people who are thinking differently about themselves because of the work that we’ve done. And that’s where you can’t allow great to be the enemy of the good. Michelle Obama admitted Donald Trump’s 2016 victory ‘still hurts’ (Image: BBC News) Michelle Obama shared her ‘darkest hours’ in her new memoir (Image: BBC News)”You know, did everything get fixed in the eight years that we were there? Absolutely not. That’s not how change happens. But we laid a marker in the sand. We pushed the wheel forward a bit.”But progress isn’t about a steady climb upward. There are ups and downs and stagnation. That’s the nature of change.”And that’s why the work that we’re doing today is about empowering the next generation, the generation that we’re handing the baton over to and making space for them to make their mark on history.”Ms Obama said it was important to have leadership that “reflects the direction that we want to go in as a people” and that made the general public “feel seen”.She said: “Leadership matters. The voices at the top matter if we can continue to be susceptible to voices that want to lead by fear and division. That’s why government matters, democracy matters. Voting matters. So I think it starts with having leadership that reflects the direction that we want to go in as a people.”READ MORE: Michelle Obama admits she won’t hug King Charles BBC’s Naga Munchetty asked Michelle Obama if she still felt the pain (Image: BBC News) Barack Obama shattered a glass ceiling in 2008 by becoming the first Black US President (Image: YOUTUBE/@C-Span)Barack Obama trailed the blaze in becoming the first Black American President to ever hold that office in a sweeping presidential victory in 2008.After rising to the presidential office in 2008 and securing his bid to get re-elected in 2012, the Obama years provided hope to a new generation of people of colour and revived the belief that in America, anyone can trigger change. But his eight years in office were overshadowed by Donald Trump who won by a razor-thin margin in the Electoral College against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton who won the popular vote by 3 million votes in 2016. Reading from the pages of her book, Michelle Obama said: “We’d tried to live those principles out loud, recognizing that we made it as far as we had despite, and maybe even in defiance of, the bigotry and bias so deeply embedded in American life. We understood that our presence as Black people in the White House said something about what was possible.”DON’T MISS:James Corden’s shared takebacks of ‘fragile ego’ in Hollywood [REPORT]      Barack Obama’s fortune – How the former President earns MILLIONS [REPORT]      Meghan and Harry ‘want to copy Obamas’ as Duke to reveal fatherly joy [REPORT]       Donald Trump won the 2016 US presidential election against Hillary Clinton (Image: YOUTUBE/@C-Span)That’s why, when Trump won the presidency in 2016 after Obama’s eight years in office, the former first lady said, the election results hit her so hard.In a clip from the audio version of her forthcoming book, she said: “Whether or not the 2016 election was a direct rebuke of all that, it did hurt. It still hurts. I couldn’t help but return to the choice our country had made to replace Barack Obama with Donald Trump. What were we to take from that?”Asked what question she most disliked being asked, she said: “‘Are you going to run for president?’ – I detest it”, adding: “I’m not going to run.”Donald Trump’s four-year term in office stunned the world as he achieved a string of conservative victories domestically, including a reshaping of the federal judiciary with conservative-leaning judges, a failure to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, a policy of separation of thousands of families at the US-Mexico border under the controversial zero-tolerance policy and sweeping tax cuts.READ NEXT:Prince Harry goes to war with Michelle Obama for memoir salesMeghan and Harry modelling themselves on Obamas – deemed too ‘boring’Meghan and Harry entering ‘second part of transformation’The ‘Spartan’ characteristic that Kate shares with Michelle ObamaKate & William have changed Kensington Palace’s interiors – see inside