Donald Trump made First Lady Michelle Obama a public target of his anger for the first time on Friday in the final weeks of the presidential race, attacking her for comments she once made about Hillary Clinton.
“His wife, all she wants to do is campaign. And I see how much his wife likes Hillary,” Mr. Trump told a rally in North Carolina as he shifted his attack from President Barack Obama to the First Lady.
Michelle’s 2008 speech“But wasn’t she the one that originally started the statement: If you can’t take care of your home... You can’t take care of the White House or the country,” Mr. Trump said, paraphrasing a remark that Ms. Obama made in 2008.
Ms. Clinton was then running for the Democratic nomination against fellow Senator Barack Obama.
Ms. Obama had earned praise from Ms. Clinton last week for delivering a strong critique of Trump and his “intolerable” attitude toward women.
Mr. Trump hit back on Friday.
“She’s the one that started that,” he said of Ms. Obama’s comments. “I said ‘We can’t say that, it's too vicious,’” Mr. Trump went on.
“Now she said that, but we don’t hear about that.”
Ms. Obama had caused a stir during the 2008 primaries when she addressed a ‘women-for-Obama’ event in Chicago and criticised Ms. Clinton, whose husband, former President Bill Clinton, was accused of sexually harassing and abusing women.
‘Good families’“One of the things, the important aspects of this race, is role-modelling what good families should look like,” she had said at the time.
“And my view is that, if you can’t run your own house, you certainly can’t run the White House. Can’t do it.”
However, the campaign had also said that the line was not directed at the Clintons and instead referred to their own struggle with parenting during the campaign. —AFP
