Michelle Obama was emotional saying goodbye to the White House

The former US First Lady admitted that she couldn't hold back the tears on her final trip on a presidential plane with her husband Barack Obama before Trump became president in 2017.

Obama - who has daughters Malia, 24, and Sasha, 21, with the 44th president – said on 'The Light Podcast': "When those doors shut, I cried for 30 minutes straight, uncontrollable sobbing, because that's how much we were holding it together for eight years.

"After the inauguration – and we know whose inauguration we were at – that day was so emotional on so many different reasons. We were leaving the home we had been in for eight years.

"They remembered Chicago but they had spent more time in the White House than anywhere. So we were saying goodbye to the staff and all the people who helped to raise them."

Obama recalled how she felt dismayed by the lack of diversity on show during Trump's inauguration speech.

She said: "There were tears, there was the emotion. But then to sit on that stage and watch the opposite of what we represented on display – there was no diversity, there was no colour on that stage, there was no reflection of the broader sense of America."

Trump fixated on the size of the crowd compared to his predecessor at the inauguration but Obama poked fun at the low attendance.

She said: "You take your last flight off, flying over the Capitol, where there weren't many people there. We saw it."

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