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What Trump said has 'shaken me to my core', says Michelle Obama

MANCHESTER (New Hampshire) — Mrs Michelle Obama on Thursday (Oct 13) issued a deeply personal denunciation of Mr Donald Trump for his lewd comments about women, exhorting voters in scathing terms to reject his candidacy and the campaign’s increasingly vulgar tenor by backing Mrs Hillary Clinton.

First lady Michelle Obama speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Photo: AP

First lady Michelle Obama speaks during a campaign rally for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Thursday, in Manchester, New Hampshire. Photo: AP

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MANCHESTER (New Hampshire) — Mrs Michelle Obama on Thursday (Oct 13) issued a deeply personal denunciation of Mr Donald Trump for his lewd comments about women, exhorting voters in scathing terms to reject his candidacy and the campaign’s increasingly vulgar tenor by backing Mrs Hillary Clinton.

“This is not normal, this is not politics as usual,” Mrs Obama said in a 25-minute speech during which her voice at times quavered with emotion.

“This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to,” she added. “No woman deserves to be treated this way — none of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

In remarks that were among the most outspoken by a first lady in modern history, Mrs Obama — who has mostly avoided the political limelight — positioned herself at the center of a campaign she characterised as having devolved into “madness”.

She implored voters to “stand up and say enough is enough”.

“I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” the first lady told several hundred voters at a university here.

“I can’t stop thinking about this — it has shaken me to my core,” Mrs Obama said, reacting to the emergence last week of a recording in which Mr Trump was heard coarsely boasting about kissing and groping women.

“I feel it so personally,” she continued. “It’s like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you’re walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body, or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long so you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.”

The New Hampshire rally was Mrs Obama’s sixth campaign appearance for Mrs Clinton in a month. It came just moments before Mr Trump appeared in West Palm Beach, Florida, to angrily denounce as “false smears” news reports in which several women said he had made unwanted advances on them.

But the 70-year-old Trump was defiant, castigating his accusers as "horrible liars" and accusing Mrs Clinton of conspiring in a coordinated media attempt to sabotage his campaign.

At least six women have accused Mr Trump of making unwanted physical advances in accounts reported by The New York Times, NBC, People Magazine and others, most of them after Mr Trump asserted in Sunday's debate with Mrs Clinton that he had never sexually assaulted a woman.

With his campaign in free-fall and sliding in the polls, Mr Trump pounded the battleground states of Florida and Ohio.

"These vicious claims about me of inappropriate conduct with women are totally and absolutely false," Mr Trump told a rally in West Palm Beach. "The attacks are orchestrated by the Clintons and their media allies."

Mr Trump said his lawyers were preparing a lawsuit against The New York Times — which published the accounts of two women who accused him of groping and kissing them — unless the paper retracts the article.

The Times refused to back down.

"We published newsworthy information about a subject of deep public concern," the paper's assistant general counsel David McCraw wrote in a letter to Mr Trump's lawyers. AGENCIES

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