Dignity had always gotten us through. It was a choice, and not always the easy one, but the people I respected most in life made it again and again, every single day. There was a motto Barack and I tried to live by, and I offered it that night from the stage: When they go low, we go high.
Two months later, just weeks before the election, a tape would surface of Donald Trump in an unguarded moment, bragging to a TV host in 2005 about sexually assaulting women, using language so lewd and vulgar that it put media outlets in a quandary about how to quote it without violating the established standards of decency. In the end, the standards of decency were simply lowered in order to make room for the candidate’s voice.
When I heard it, I could hardly believe it. And then again, there was something painfully familiar in the menace and male jocularity of that tape. I can hurt you and get away with it. It was an expression of hatred that had generally been kept out of polite company, but still lived in the marrow of our supposedly enlightened society—alive and accepted enough that someone like Donald Trump could afford to be cavalier about it. Every woman I know recognized it. Every person who’s ever been made to feel “other” recognized it. It was precisely what so many of us hoped our own children would never need to experience, and yet probably would. Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.
My body buzzed with fury after hearing that tape. I was scheduled to speak at a campaign rally for Hillary the following week, and rather than delivering a straightforward endorsement of her capabilities, I felt compelled to try to address Trump’s words directly—to counter his voice with my own.
I worked on my remarks while sitting in a hospital room at Walter Reed, where my mother was having back surgery, my thoughts flowing fast. I’d been mocked and threatened many times now, cut down for being black, female, and vocal. I’d felt the derision directed at my body, the literal space I occupied in the world. I’d watched Donald Trump stalk Hillary Clinton during a debate, following her around as she spoke, standing too close, trying to diminish her presence with his. I can hurt you and get away with it. Women endure entire lifetimes of these indignities—in the form of catcalls, groping, assault, oppression. These things injure us. They sap our strength. Some of the cuts are so small they’re barely visible. Others are huge and gaping, leaving scars that never heal. Either way, they accumulate. We carry them everywhere, to and from school and work, at home while raising our children, at our places of worship, anytime we try to advance.
For me, Trump’s comments were another blow. I couldn’t let his message stand. Working with Sarah Hurwitz, the deft speechwriter who’d been with me since 2008, I channeled my fury into words, and then—after my mother had recovered from surgery—I delivered them one October day in Manchester, New Hampshire. Speaking to a high-energy crowd, I made my feelings clear. “This is not normal,” I said. “This is not politics as usual. This is disgraceful. It is intolerable.” I articulated my rage and my fear, along with my faith that with this election Americans understood the true nature of what they were choosing between. I put my whole heart into giving that speech.
I then flew back to Washington, praying I’d been heard.
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As fall continued, Barack and I began making plans for our move to a new house in January, having decided to stay in Washington so that Sasha could finish high school at Sidwell. Malia, meanwhile, was in South America on a gap-year adventure, feeling the freedom of being as far away from the political intensity as she could. I implored my staff in the East Wing to finish strong, even as they needed to think about finding new jobs, even as the battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump grew more intense and distracting by the day.
On November 7, 2016, the evening before the election, Barack and I made a quick trip to Philadelphia to join Hillary and her family at a final rally before an enormous crowd on Independence Mall. The mood was positive, expectant. I took heart in the optimism Hillary projected that