We’ve gotten plenty used to Former First Lady Michelle Obama regularly airing her grievances about her marriage to former President Barack Obama and, frankly, her (immensely privileged) life in general, but now we are learning more about the “genuine tension” in their union from her husband’s perspective.
The forty-fourth president is the subject of a lengthy profile in The New Yorker that dropped earlier this week, in which he talks about the demands he has faced since leaving office. Titled “Barack Obama Considers His Role in the Age of Trump,” the piece examines how the Obamas didn’t really exit the national spotlight the way former first couples before them did.
‘Genuine Tension’
That, of course, is blamed on President Donald Trump and what the former president called his “recklessness.” But Mr. Obama admitted that reemerging as the de facto leader of the otherwise rudderless Democrat Party has not gone over well in his household.
“Still, Obama parcels his time with care. He told me that the demands of his schedule are of great concern to Michelle,” reporter Peter Slevin wrote.
“She wants to see her husband easing up and spending more time with her, enjoying what remains of our lives,” Mr. Obama told him. “It does create a genuine tension in our household, and it frustrates her. I’m more forgiving of it, in the sense that I understand why people feel that way.”
He went on to acknowledge the unusualness of his current role in politics. “People aren’t looking at me in historical comparison to other Presidents,” Mr. Obama said. “They don’t care about the fact that no other ex-President was the main surrogate for the Party for four election cycles after they left office.”
‘Sobbing Uncontrollably’
But that isn’t the only glimpse into the mind of the former first lady that appeared in the piece. Slevin recounted what apparently unfolded as President Trump was inaugurated the first time in January 2017. He wrote:
On January 20, 2017, as Donald Trump was being sworn in as the forty-fifth President, the Obamas sat on the reviewing stand. Michelle noted the predominantly white and male faces around them. At some point, she stopped even trying to smile. “There was no color on that stage,” she said later. “There was no reflection of the broader sense of America.”
And then there was what went down a little later in the day when the two departed Joint Base Andrews on a plane bound for Palm Springs. On the flight, Mrs. Obama reportedly “sobbed uncontrollably for a half hour.”
“It was just the release of eight years of trying to do everything perfectly,” she said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2018. “I said to Barack, ‘That was so hard. What we just did was so hard, and I’ve wanted to say that for eight years.’”
More of the Same
On Wednesday’s edition of The Megyn Kelly Show, Megyn said the profile really doesn’t reveal anything new when you consider uncomfortable relationship confessions and endless victimization have become par for the course with these two.
“What we have here is more tension between the Obamas and more ‘woe is me’ from Michelle Obama, who, again, as reiterated by The New Yorker, felt the American people, who she has called racist many times, were holding her to a high standard that no human being could could meet,” Megyn explained. “So is this, in fact, our sexism and our racism that put poor Michelle in such a terrible position for these eight years?”
Sohrab Ahmari, U.S. editor at Unherd, was not inclined to think so. “No, I don’t think so. And it’s more of that… [which] defined that kind of generation where the message was the person,” he said. “Look, President Obama had a historic opportunity to remake the country. I know some would say he did and in destructive ways. I don’t think so. I think what’s remarkable about Obama is, ultimately, besides Obamacare, how little he did fundamentally to change the pattern.”
The former president is also in the news this week for a sit-down he did with Stephen Colbert in which he had the audacity to accuse the Trump administration of weaponizing the justice system when the entire Russia collusion hoax (i.e. OG ‘lawfare’) originated on his watch.
The Federalist’s Sean Davis said the interviews are an unpleasant reminder of what was. “I agree with him, yes, lawfare is awful. It is a cancer on the American republic, and I don’t know if it’s something we can come back from,” Davis said. “[But] he is the one who started it! He gave it its origin story. For this guy to go out there and pretend he had nothing to do with it.”
“I will tell you, between that [Colbert] interview, between The New Yorker article, he had kind of faded away and I had forgotten about how mendacious and unlikable and dishonest he was,” Davis added. “So thank you, Barack, for coming back and reminding all of us why we couldn’t wait to get rid of you.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Ahmari and Davis by tuning in to episode 1,311 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.