We already know Michelle Obama has a big – like, really, really, big – issue with how her husband, former President Barack Obama, chews his food. And now we are learning she also can’t stand the way he cries.
How do we know this? Because she complained about it on her podcast, of course.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Ana Kasparian, host and executive producer of The Young Turks, to discuss the former first lady’s latest awkward revelation and why her podcast doesn’t seem to be resonating with viewers.
A Crying Shame
Just two weeks after telling a couples therapist that she and Barack have nothing to talk about and his chewing makes her want to “smack him upside the head,” Michelle was back with another doozy on the latest episode of her IMO (a.k.a. in my opinion) podcast with her brother Craig Robinson.
The pair was talking to former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson about fatherhood when the topic of tears came up. Robinson suggested that Barnes would likely get emotional when he sent his kids off to college, which is when Michelle jumped in with a story about her spouse.
“We had one of those moments with Barack when we dropped Malia off because we still… tried to do all the normal stuff, even as president,” she recalled of sending her eldest daughter to Harvard.
After explaining that Malia had to move in before everyone else so that “the presidential motorcade could go on the campus,” Michelle said Barack struggled with how to help during the move-in process. “So, we’re doing all the college stuff. Making her bed, because whenever they went to camp or somewhere, I said, ‘I’ll make your bed once… really neat and nice, and then that’s it. Got her room all set up,” she shared. “And you could tell Barack was totally clueless. He didn’t know where to be.”
That is apparently when someone handed him a lamp to assemble to keep him busy. “We gave him a lamp from Ikea and said, ‘Put it together,'” Michelle claimed. “There was nothing to put together, but he was over there with his lamp for like two hours.”
And then came the emotional sendoff. “We took her to lunch at some restaurant, and then we had to leave. We had to get in this motorcade and leave the baby behind,” she explained. “And to watch her standing at that restaurant, ugh, waving goodbye… I’m crying.”
While her tears were apparently acceptable, her husband’s were not. “We’re driving back to Air Force One in the motorcade, we’re a little quiet, and I hear [snorting sounds],” Michelle said. “And I had to look over and be like [huh?], and the agents are like, ‘Sir, are you okay?’ And he’s, like, [making snorting sounds]. It’s like, man, just do it. Just cry. Let it go. Make it happen.”
Unadulterated Loathing?
Megyn said the anecdote is exactly what we’ve come to expect from the former first lady. “She never misses the chance to try to emasculate him or make him look like a doofus… It is well past [the point of] ‘oh, we’ll be a little self deprecating so people can relate to us.’ Every episode is something insulting about him,” she noted. “The imitation of the way he sounded while he was crying – that is an intimate family moment that she now wants to repeat in front of the national audience?”
Perhaps that is why Megyn keeps coming to the same conclusion. “I’m telling you, she loathes him,” she said. “It is really clear.”
Ratings Woes
Kasparian didn’t even realize the former first lady was back in the podcast game, which might help explain why the YouTube videos of the show rarely get more than a mere few thousand views. Those numbers are well below what would be expected for someone of Michelle’s stature, but Kasparian had a theory.
“I can understand why it doesn’t have the viewership that you would expect as someone who is a former first lady because think about how Democratic voters really put Obama on a pedestal. He is, in their minds, the ideal Democratic leader, and they have… great memories of the eight years Obama was in charge,” she explained. “And so to listen to a podcast or watch a podcast in which his wife is trashing him all the time, they’re not going to appreciate that.”
She said it is something they have run into at The Young Turks. “Every time we… do a video where we’re critical of something Obama has done recently, we always lose subscribers because they don’t want to hear it. They want to look back on those eight years and only think of the positives,” Kasparian posited. “Having Michelle Obama… insult former President Obama is probably not something that they find very appealing.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Kasparian by tuning in to episode 1,172 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.