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Donald Trump warned Michelle Obama that she made a “big mistake” by being “mean” to him at a rally in Atlanta.

Speaking Monday evening at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the former president struck a cheerful, wry tone as he warned the former first lady that she had “opened a little bit of a box.”

“Are you the one who was mean to me? Michelle Obama,” Trump said, provoking a large chorus of boos, jeers and screams from his audience. “She was really – oooooh.”

“I’ve always tried to be very kind and respectful,” he continued, although he spent years accusing the former first lady’s husband of being secretly born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the presidency of the United States.

“Oooooh! She opened a little bit of a box. She opened a little bit of something,” Trump said. “She was mean, whooo.

“It shouldn’t be like this. It’s a big mistake she made. With your support on November 5, we will achieve success that no one can imagine.”

Trump’s comments were a response to a speech by Michelle Obama in Michigan on Saturday, in which she accused him of “gross incompetence,” “erratic behavior” and “obvious mental decline.”

“I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m a little frustrated that some of us choose to ignore Donald Trump’s gross incompetence, while asking Kamala to dazzle us at every turn,” Obama said.

“I hope you will forgive me if I am a little angry because we are indifferent to his erratic behavior, to his obvious mental decline, to his past as a convicted criminal, a known slum lord, a convicted predator responsible for sexual abuse. »

The words referred to Trump’s guilty verdict in Manhattan in his hush money scandal, his infamous past as a landlord and the verdict in a defamation trial by a woman who accused him of sexual assault.

Later in Trump’s speech Monday, when he brought up Michelle Obama again, some of his supporters began chanting, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” Trump was silent for a few seconds, before reprimanding them: “Be kind.”

It came during a busy campaign day for Trump and Kamala Harris, with the latter giving a rally in Ann Arbor, Michigan, while Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen fired up the crowd in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.