The lawyer, who served as US First Lady from 2009 to 2017, told audience members at the Inbound marketing and sales conference that those who voted for Donald Trump had done so because they were “told to like” him.
While 69-year-old Hillary Clinton – who served as US Secretary of State as well as First Lady during her husband Bill's presidential tenure – won the popular vote in the election by roughly three million ballots, she lost out to Trump, 71, in the tally of the electoral college vote.
Mrs Obama, whose husband Barack had largely refrained from speaking negatively of Trump since leaving the White House following two consecutive presidential terms, expressed her frustration with the election result.
“If you don’t value your own voice and I see it all the time… quite frankly, we saw this in this election,” she told the conference in Boston.
“As far as I’m concerned, women who voted against Hillary Clinton, voted against their own voice in a way. To me, it doesn’t say as much about Hillary, and everybody’s trying to wonder, well what does this mean for Hillary? No, no, no, what does it mean for us as women?
“That we look at those two candidates, as women, and many of us said ‘that guy? He’s better for me. His voice is more true to me'. Well to me that just says you don’t like your voice. You like the thing you’re told to like, the voice we’re told that we’re supposed to like.”
Her speech received rousing applause from attendees, and drove social media wild.
