Another week, another instance of Michelle Obama complaining about her time as first lady on a podcast.
The former first lady was interviewing Conan O’Brien on the latest episode of her IMO podcast with her brother Craig Robinson when the conversation turned to an event the comedian attended with Obama on a military base over a decade ago. Rather than reminisce about the remarkable service members they met that day, O’Brien set Obama up to drone on about how challenging it was to be part of the first black First Family.
On Wednesday’s show, Megyn was joined by Glenn Greenwald, host of System Update on Substack, to discuss the inappropriateness of Obama’s latest lamentations.
Obama’s Latest Grievance
O’Brien is hosting the Oscars later this month, which likely explains the booking on Obama and Robinson’s podcast. What is harder to understand is why the funny man felt compelled to recount his 2015 trip to the Middle East with the first lady in this way:
O’BRIEN: You and I took a trip once to visit a big, giant military base in the Middle East… You and your team were being so careful that everything is done by the book… You know, there’s no perks. There’s no– I was really impressed with that, and it occurred to me then, ‘Oh, I see. Everyone feels we need to be so, so, so far beyond.’
That gave Obama the opening to talk about the hardship of being the “first black family in the White House” and throw shade at President Donald Trump in the process:
OBAMA: It wasn’t even a feeling. It was the truth. It’s the truth, you know? I mean, there’s absolutely no way that the behavior in this current administration would have been accepted by the first black family in the White House. So fortunately, it wasn’t difficult to do because we are those people. It wasn’t difficult to follow rules. It wasn’t difficult to have high standards. It wasn’t very difficult because in order to get where we are… you don’t get here without being damn near perfect. We don’t get to fail two, three, five, seven times. We don’t get to file bankruptcy over and over again and still be considered a successful business person. You know, we don’t get to not be at the top of the class. Um, you know, every, every I has to be dotted, every T has to be crossed.
Throughout the rant, O’Brien could be heard saying “right” about a dozen times, while Robinson remained quiet.
Missing the Mark
In Megyn’s view, the worst part is what Obama and O’Brien failed to mention about their time on the base. “What I was waiting for him to say was, maybe, ‘You were so great with the troops. The way you guys interacted, it seemed so authentic to me’… or ‘Could you believe how badass those guys were’… The normal instinct by most patriots [is] to make it about the guys and the gals who you saw at the military base,” she noted. “But both of them were determined to make it about her.”
But it went beyond that. “[It was] not just about her, but about racial grievance, again, with some digs at Trump,” Megyn added. “She is so small-minded. This is the only lens through which she sees her experience as first lady.”
Greenwald said the clip was hard to get through and blamed O’Brien for teeing up the story in such a way that Obama could racialize it. “The whole thing was set up by Conan being the good white progressive ally… It was his thesis,” he noted. “I don’t understand why nobody near her says, ‘You’re one of the richest and most famous women in the world… You were the first lady… Every door is open for you. Maybe just tune down a little bit on the constant grievance because you’re not really a major figure of sympathy.'”
“Americans twice voted for them… They were in the White House for eight years. Before that, [Barack Obama] was elected senator out of nowhere by the state of Illinois,” Greenwald added. “And you would think that she spent the first half of her life like under Jim Crow or in chains or something the way she speaks. It is really resentment producing.”
Megyn agreed. “There is no gratitude, not even for the troops. Not a word about how tough they were, how amazing they were, how selfless they were in their sacrifice – just her sacrifice in having to be first lady for eight years and deal with the abject racism of the country,” she concluded. “I’ve had it with this bitch. I’m sorry, but I am done listening to her whine with the help… of these little white liberals who are begging for her to pat them on the head.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Greenwald by tuning in to episode 1,265 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 The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.