Unable to dodge the divorce rumors that have been swirling for months, Barack and Michelle Obama attempted to put the speculation about their marriage to rest this week with a joint podcast appearance that does not appear to have had its desired effect.
The former president joined his wife and her brother, Craig Robinson, on the siblings’ IMO podcast, where the ex-first lady has spent much of the last four months trashing her husband, her kids, and her time in the White House.
On Friday’s show, Megyn was joined by Maureen Callahan, host of MK Media’s The Nerve with Maureen Callahan, to discuss the awkward interview and why it felt performative.
The Optics
If Michelle Obama doesn’t want people to think she is getting divorced, she certainly has an interesting way of talking about her marriage. The former first lady – who raised many an eyebrow, when she skipped former President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral and President Donald Trump’s inauguration – has not been particularly kind to her husband or their time together on her podcast.
Barack’s appearance on the episode that dropped Wednesday was apparently an attempt to smooth things over and show a united front, but it didn’t exactly start off on a strong note.
As you can see in the video above, the ex-president stiffly hugged his wife as he entered the set as Robinson quipped “wait, you guys like each other?” Michelle acknowledged “the rumor mill” as her brother and husband shared a hearty embrace. “He’s got more chemistry with and affection for brother Craig than his own wife, if you look at the way they greet each other,” Callahan noted.
She said the arrangement of the set is also impossible to ignore. “My favorite thing is the staging because we all know that politics is about optics and stagecraft,” she noted. “Michelle’s at this end of the table, Obama is all the way over here at this end, and Brother Craig is between them like… a marriage counselor. If they are really still in love, and together, and not getting a divorce, why aren’t they seated next to each other?”
And then there was the former president’s body language. “His arms are crossed, his legs are crossed, he is torqued away towards brother Craig. He seems fearful of her,” she posited. “Those two are, like, trauma bonding over here, while Michelle’s trying to get her shivs and her digs in. It’s wild!”
The Content
Michelle started the interview with a declarative, “It’s my husband, y’all,” which Megyn said felt totally insincere due to the “instant affectation.” And as usual, she went on to discuss the “really hard times” in their union.
“There hasn’t been one moment in our marriage where I thought about quitting, um, my man,” Michelle said with an uncharacteristic intonation. “Um and we’ve had some really hard times, but we have had a lot of fun times, a lot of adventures, and I have become a better person because of the man I’m married to.”
Megyn wasn’t buying it. “She doesn’t talk like that,” she said. “There’s something going on there where she is really acting in order to be, like, down home, and ‘I love my man,’ and ‘trust me.’ The whole thing, to me, looked like complete affectation.”
Callahan agreed it was a “poor performance” from Michelle, who she said cannot simply snap her fingers and pretend she hasn’t previously gone on the record (on the very same program) about their “bad decade” of marriage and what she perceives as Barack’s flaws.
Megyn agreed. “That is a good point… They can pretend all they want that it is just tabloid fodder that has led people to think they are on the outs,” she noted. “They clearly did it to try to tamp down the rumors, but the greatest indictment of the state of their relationship all comes from her own statements about how awful marriage and motherhood are.”
“It’s like, we don’t have to make it up,” Megyn added. “You led us right to that water, Michelle.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Callahan by tuning in to episode 1,111 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.