Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson recently slammed former first lady Michelle Obama for talking about racism and discrimination because — according to the right-wing personality — those issues are so yesterday.
During a segment of “The Megyn Kelly Show” posted online on Tuesday, Tucker and Kelly expressed their frustration over Obama’s recent remarks on Jay Shetty’s podcast, in which she talked about the racism and bias that still plague the U.S.
Shetty asked the former first lady and her brother, Craig Robinson, if either of them had ever had a “run-in” that taught them about racial bias. The siblings responded that a police officer once falsely accused a then-12-year-old Robinson of stealing a bike his parents had gifted him as he was riding it home one day.
Robinson shared that even though the officer was also Black, there had been reports in the area of a stolen bike — and the officer couldn’t believe that Robinson’s brand-new bike belonged to him.
Shetty then asked Obama to share ways those same issues come up in the present, and she referenced the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the concerns they raise over due process.
“Knowing that there’s so much bias, so much racism and so much ignorance that fuels those kinds of choices, I worry for people of color all over this country. And I don’t know that we will have the advocates to protect everybody,” the former first lady said. “And that frightens me — it keeps me up at night.”
Marcus Ingram via Getty Images
Carlson scoffed at those remarks after a clip of the interview played on “The Megyn Kelly Show.” He told Kelly that Obama’s comments about racism felt “so antique.”
“It feels so 2017. It’s like, literally nobody cares. Nobody cares at all,” he said. “All of those talking points, ‘people of color are under attack’ — no, they’re not.”
“They’re coming here by the millions because this is the safest country for everybody, no matter what your color is,” he claimed. “That’s just so old-fashioned.”
And yet, amid President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants in the last 100 days, his administration has also led a crusade against diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and attempted to enact more stringent voter registration requirements, which voting rights activists say would disproportionately disenfranchise voters of color.
Robinson’s bike incident as a child is also not as archaic an anecdote as Carlson apparently believes — racial bias in policing has been a longstanding issue in the U.S. A study from the University of Michigan published last year examined false police searches of innocent drivers and found that Black drivers had higher false alarm rates for contraband and that officers may use different criteria for searching Black drivers.
Deepak Sarma, Inaugural Distinguished Scholar in the Public Humanities at Case Western Reserve University, said that Kelly and Tucker’s conversation about Obama “is textbook gaslighting, where they are trying to convince people who are sensitive to racial injustice that their experiences are simply not true.”
“They deny, with impunity, the extent to which racial discrimination plays a role in American life,” Sarma said. “Their subtle and covert strategy to uphold and advocate racial blindness (their choice not to see skin color as relevant) exposes the degree to which they are privileged.”
Saying racism and discrimination don’t exist doesn’t make it true.
Sarma said that they believe Kelly and Tucker are both “intentionally confusing their audience with what they think ought to be, with how things are.”
“This mode of persuasive manipulation is consistent with a strategy to invalidate the voice of the oppressed, to maintain control of MAGA,” Sarma said, later adding that Kelly and Carson likely feel “emboldened” since Trump’s election, “as are MAGA conservatives across America.”
“The country is not safe for any of the marginalized people who are in the MAGA/ Trump crosshairs and who do not fit their narrow definition of who should be regarded as an American, and in some cases, given the dehumanizing language (referring to some as animals) deployed, who should be [regarded] as a human being,” Sarma said.
Shaun Harper, a professor of public policy, education and business at the University of Southern California who is an expert in racial equity, said that Tucker and Kelly’s conversation failed to note that “millions of Africans were brought here involuntarily, enslaved for hundreds of years, and that our nation still has not yet addressed the continuing effects of that terrorism and the subsequent centuries of anti-Black exclusion, violence, and racism.”
Harper also emphasized that just because Obama acknowledges the country’s “terrible record on racism, racial equity, and racial justice,” her record has also made it clear that she “loves America” — and that Kelly and Tucker are misrepresenting her statements.
And Sarma thinks it’s ironic that Carlson used the word “antique” to describe Obama’s comments, since proponents of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement have shown a “desire to turn back the clock to a pre-civil war culture that is antique and antiquated.”
Harper added: “Carlson is right about racism being ‘so antique, so 2017, and so old-fashioned.’ Too many Americans love these antiques and remain determined to preserve and display them. Antique racism remains unbroken in 2025.”
Read the full article here
