Michelle Obama suggests standards have plummeted under Trump presidency

'We're seeing that now, quite frankly, the bar is,' says former First Lady gesturing downwards

Michelle Obama has issued a thinly veiled rebuke of Donald Trump and suggested presidential standards have nosedived since he entered the White House.

The former First Lady said the bar for her husband’s presidency kept rising during his tenure but started to sink on the 2016 election campaign trail and had continued to diminish yet further since then.

"I joked when I was on the campaign trail that the bar just kept moving,” the 53-year-old said during the Pennsylvania Conference for Women.

“We're seeing that now, quite frankly, the bar is," she continued, gesturing downwards with her hands and prompting laughter from the audience.

Ms Obama, who married Barack Obama in 1992, also used the speech to explain how much more open her life had become since leaving behind the constraints of the presidency. Nevertheless, she hinted the current inhabitant of the White House was not treating the office in quite the same way.

"We sort of had a standard of ethics, and there were things we wouldn't do - you know - so there were a lot of constraints under the Obama administration," she said.

"There was a certain expectation, so there was a lot that we couldn't do and we didn't do because of our respect for the position and what it means to the country to have a commander-in-chief that actually upholds and honours the office, so definitely, life is freer now."

The cloaked rebuke was greeted with a round of applause and cheers from the crowd.

Ms Obama, who enjoyed consistently high popularity ratings as First Lady, argued there was a stark difference in the lessons young people would learn from her husband's presidency and that of Mr Trump.

"Many of the young people today, they only know Barack Obama as their president and what that standard felt like and what kind of messages were being talked about," she said. "They grew up only under hope and possibility and options and opportunity and creating more space."

Taking care not to mention President Trump by name, she added: "I think they will feel some of what's happening now as intrinsically not what they were taught."

Nevertheless, Ms Obama was not wholly positive about her time as First Lady and also discussed the embarrassment she felt about the lack of diversity in Congress when attending her husband's State of the Union address every year.

Watching on from the balcony, she said she always did a double-take at the divided Congress. She said while one side was "all men, all white”, the other had some women and people of colour.

"At the State of the Union address ... one side of the room is literally grey and white," she reflected. "On the other side of the room, there are yellows and blues and whites and greens. Physically, there's a difference in color."

She added: "I look at that and I go, no wonder. No wonder we struggle, no wonder people don't trust politics … We're not even noticing what these rooms look like."

While the 115th Congress is the most racially diverse in US history, according to the Pew Research Centre it is still 81 per cent white. There are 50 black lawmakers in the chambers, along with 39 Hispanic members, 15 Asians, and two Native American politicians. On top of this, congress is also 81 per cent male, with just 104 women in the House and Senate.