The era when it looked like the Obamas might try to grit their teeth and get through to the end of this American election cycle in 2020 before coming out swinging is officially over.

Barack dropped some louche but pointed critiques of the Trump administration's general antipathy toward facts and truth while on the midterms campaign trail, but Michelle's new memoir, Becoming, goes in on Trump, a man she says she could "never forgive".

It's over his support for the 'birther' movement, the racist conspiracy which alleged Barack Obama was born in Kenya and therefore couldn't be President, and the danger which the Obamas felt it put their family in.

"The whole [birther] thing was crazy and mean-spirited, of course, its underlying bigotry and xenophobia hardly concealed," Michelle writes. "But it was also dangerous, deliberately meant to stir up the wingnuts and kooks. What if someone with an unstable mind loaded a gun and drove to Washington? What if that person went looking for our girls? Donald Trump, with his loud and reckless innuendos, was putting my family’s safety at risk. And for this I’d never forgive him."

Always good to see the word "wingnuts" given a run out, even if it's as an extremely mild euphemism for 'potential child-murderer'.