Michelle Obama, the former first lady, made the case during a rally for Vice President Kamala Harris that a vote for former President Donald J. Trump would be a vote against women’s reproductive rights and health.CreditCredit...Emily Elconin for The New York Times
Michelle Obama issued an impassioned plea to American voters on Saturday — and, in particular, American men — anchored in a searing and intimate depiction of women’s bodies and reproductive health, and what she described as the life-or-death stakes of returning former President Donald J. Trump to power.
In her first appearance on the campaign trail during this election, Mrs. Obama, long reluctant to engage in the political arena, described the far-reaching consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, in the concrete terms of personal tragedy.
“If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood, or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late,” Mrs. Obama said. “You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.”
Mrs. Obama’s words — at a rally in Michigan where she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris — amounted to an extraordinary centering of women’s bodies and their private experiences in an American presidential election. She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than “baby-making vessels.”
And she castigated the media and many voters for holding Ms. Harris to a higher standard than her opponent, for “choosing to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn.”
“We expect her to be intelligent and articulate, to have a clear set of policies, to never show too much anger, to prove time and time again that she belongs,” Mrs. Obama said. “But for Trump, we expect nothing at all, no understanding of policy, no ability to put together a coherent argument, no honesty, no decency, no morals.”
Former President Donald Trump on Saturday invited several Muslim leaders onstage with him at a campaign rally in Michigan as he courts Arab American and Muslim voters disillusioned or angry over US policy on Israel and Gaza in the critical battleground state.
“They could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said in the Detroit suburb of Novi, located about a half hour from Dearborn, which last year became the first Arab-majority city in the US.
Trump said in his speech that he had held a meeting earlier in the day with Muslim leaders. He was joined onstage by what his campaign described as “prominent leaders of Michigan’s Muslim community,” including Imam Belal Alzuhairi, who described Trump as the “peace” candidate.
“We, as Muslims, stand with President Trump because he promises peace – he promises peace, not war,” Alzuhairi said. “We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine.”
