On today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc react to Michelle Obama’s book tour for her new book “The Look.”
This transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.
Sami Winc: For having said that, which was very strange because you would think somebody on a show like that would be interested in the truth. And the second thing, Michelle Obama, of course, is on her whining tour. I guess we could say that. And she said that while she was in that White House, she was under a particularly white hot glare.
And those were her words that they were so stressful on the White House to be watched by everybody, I thought. Wondering your thoughts on either of those two?
Victor Davis Hanson: I’ll start with the second. First, Michelle, who was on the cover of Vogue repeatedly and who wasn’t as first lady? Oh, you were on the cover. And Melania never was.
Melania was a professional international model. I know Barack Obama said yesterday you were fine. But I think most people would say that Melania is as pretty or prettier than you are and more elegantly dressed—not reflection on you, just that’s what models are. But she wasn’t on once. And let me ask you another question.
Who was treated more unfairly? Donald Trump and Melania Trump by the media—I’m talking now NPR, PBS, NBC, CBS, ABC, New York Times, Washington Post. I could go on or you. Hmm. You. When Donald Trump made the cover of a magazine like The New Republic, he had a Hitler mustache. When you [had] Barack [in the magazine], he was dressed like FDR and said the new socialism was back. You were—everybody bent over backwards to accommodate you. I know there were people on the fringe right, that had sort of a Candace Owens proto you were a transsexual, all that crazy stuff. But by and large, in the midstream of the country, you—your memoir was a bestselling book.
You were treated with kid gloves. So when you said you’d never been proud of the country, you said until Barack was a figure. You said it was a downright mean country, you said they always raised the bar on people like us. You were given a pass. You were given a pass, and your whole life was, you were, came out of Harvard Law School.
And you were in a Chicago law firm. You did, you wanted a sneaker account right away. And then when he was elected senator, they gave you a non-job for what? A third of the million dollars basically at the University of Chicago Medical School to direct people away from the medical school who couldn’t pay. You were always given either equitable treatment or exemplary treatment, and if you want to go Google and say, make fun of first lady, see how many things come up under Melania versus you, and it will be much more. And nobody put a gun to your head and said, you have to run for president. You use that bully pulpit to push all of your issues. As far as altering the White House, you made a special little kind of nice organic garden.
You did whatever you wanted, and yet now you [complain] and now you’re worth probably over a hundred million dollars. And no offense, but I don’t think that you and Barack had any reputation, history, CV [curriculum vitae], resume of being particularly accomplished Netflix content thinkers, creators. That’s what they gave you. What, $20 million? So you walked out of the White House, remember Barack had said, I’m going to run a president. I’m going to transform the country. I’m not, I’m not going to do it just to cash in. That’s what you did. So can’t you just say, this is an amazing country that a black man and woman were elected president with the majority, with a greater white vote than the previous white candidate, and we were—but that didn’t happen. Almost immediately, when you came in, you gave the typical Michelle chip on your shoulder. Well, I was in a Target and a shorter woman wanted me to reach and didn’t know who I was, so I had to reach for a package to give to her.
It happens to all of us, Michelle, happens to all of us all the time. And I was in local supermarket two weeks ago and I pulled out a shopping cart and the woman next to me pulled out a shopping cart. She didn’t speak English and it was full of what many of them are—trash, right? And then she said to me in Spanish, can I have your shopping cart?
I felt so offended just because I’m white and I speak English. You think you can just take my shopping cart when I didn’t put trash in it? And you don’t want to clean it ’cause you don’t want to touch the trash. But I gave it to her. And I have never mentioned that incident until today. I didn’t digest it and get angry, that Sue, who is this person who’s probably here illegally and doesn’t speak [English], and she comes up to me, you know, bring this over to me.
Things happen in life and you can’t think that way, and life is so hard on you because you have a beach estate in Hawaii that you built. Contrary to many environmental regulations, you have a abode on Martha’s Vineyard on the seashore cliff, I think it’s 20 acres. I think you have 2,000 gallons worth of propane on that.
I only have 150. I have a three acre little house yard and we only have 150 gallons of propane and you get 2,000. It’s not fair. And my family at one time was bigger than yours. And then you’ve got your Kalorama mansion. You still have your Chicago nice thing, and your Tony Rezko acquired big yard, and yet that’s not enough.
All you do, we had to pay for food. We had to pay for food when we were in the White House. Well, most America, I really doubt that they sent you a bill for a ham sandwich. No offense, but it’s all complaint. And she grew up with middle class parents, and then she’s now onto the DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion]. And you know, Barack said the other day, he’s trying to whip up the racial sentiment, he said, and you know, they just confused, they just see a black eye and they say, you got the job at DEI. Well, get rid of DEI. And you won’t think that. And in your case, Barack, you came with a mediocre record after two years from what we can ascertain from anecdotal evidence. Since you wouldn’t release your student records and you went to Columbia.
And then you didn’t release your Columbian grades and then somebody got you into the Harvard Law School. Would you please release your Harvard Law School admissions LSAT, and GPA from Columbia, and then we will know whether you got in on DEI or not. Because you didn’t really cut a wide swath as an impressive law student when you graduated and you were going to be a constitutional lawyer and you were going to work on contractual law for a year.
And from what people tell us in anecdotal information when you were given a year with no teaching abilities and a fellowship to write a book—on what contractual or constitutional law? You wrote about yourself, if you did write about yourself—there was accusations that Bill Ayers wrote it, and there were certain things in his memoir, anecdotes that were strikingly similar to yours.
But let’s not judge you. And it was the best seller, and you were on your way to the races. So both of you have nothing to complain about. There are millions of people in America—Indian, Hispanic, black, white, who would die to have the opportunities that you have. But you could never let it alone—till the moment you go to the grave, you’re going to be complaining about this country.
And you know, it’s—it would be like me saying, wow. My mom was a very strong Democrat. My dad was a very strong Democrat. They had to go to an Oakland conference once, and my mom was shocked because they pulled into a parking lot at a judicial conference, and five large black males surrounded them and threatened them, and then my father, who’s very big, was well willing to, but you know, they were probably armed, so he pulled out his wallet and gave him a couple of $20, said please, my wife is a judge, and I’m not going to let you do this. Gosh, is that what black people do? I’ve never gotten over that trauma. I’ve never gotten over it, Michelle. And when I was at Stanford University, at the time my wife worked at the VA and we were walking down the street and she had a mental patient who saw her and her job was to take mental patients on bus tours and she saw one of her favorite people who actually had Down Syndrome and he, she was attending to him and an African American couple, two males came up, got right in her face and started emulating the way that that patient was talking, making fun of them. And I said, don’t do that to these two nice people. And the next thing they knew, they were pushing me and everything went downhill.
And I have never thought of that until right now, but I am obsessed with it, what happened to me? So, you know, go to East Palestine, Ohio and live there for a year, and then tell me that you’re the only oppressed person in the world. I get so tired of that, of all of these elite people, of any, any race that keep complaining about how bad they’ve had it.
You know what I mean? Oh, it’s been so bad. I could do that too. Oh yeah. I had another sinus operation. It wasn’t fair. I’ve had nine operations in my life. Now that I’m looking at a beautiful little studio, I’m looking at an orchard, I think I’m blessed beyond comprehension. I have these wonderful people listening to me, but it’s so unfair that my operation didn’t work.
Well, that’s what we get. I don’t know why she does it. Same thing with Whoopi Goldberg. She gets her new name. She gets all of this. She was a good actor in “Ghost”, and she was in “The Color Purple,” she takes off. Was it Ted Danson was her boyfriend. She was—and then she got Barbara Walters, created “The View.”
She had certain rules of decorum. It was very popular. There was, if there were politics, there were two sides. It boomed. She died. The next generation took over and wrecked it. Everybody has been sued for lying for the first time, and some judges now consider that libel. So when somebody hands you a paper from your producer who’s paying you millions of dollars and you spout off anything that comes into your mind and they say, don’t say that Donald Trump used the autopen unless you have evidence, and she had none.
And she said, well, it was just a joke. Well, people get sued for that. I don’t know if he would sue them. I doubt it. But he has sued George Stephanopoulos for lying that he was a rapist 11 times when he was never convicted of that. And the same thing with the doctor and the Kamala Harris. So there is a lot of executives that are saying about “The View,” you guys are really controversial. You’ve not got very good audience share anymore, and you’ve got a lot of criticism and we’re all under scrutiny, so just be very careful. Instead, she tears it up and, and then, you know, and she said so many crazy things about the Holocaust and Jews, and it just, it’s all these people.
I don’t know what it is. They’re all privileged, they’re all millionaires and they all whine, whine, whine, whine.
Sami Winc: Yeah, I think that’s what your audience thinks too. They listen to their complaints and the audience and I both probably think, you know, human life is like that. There are ups and there are downs, and we’ve all suffered ups and downs.
Victor Davis Hanson: DEI—that’s why it’s such a pernicious ideology, because you can translate any personal unhappiness into a cosmic ism or ology against you, on this Marxist binary you’re on the 30% victims, you know, …. the problem is, everybody, there’s not enough victimizers for all the victims.
So you have to say it’s, well, I can’t find racism, but it’s systemic. It’s everywhere. It’s insidious. You need, you need a racist detector in your foundation of your home to find it. It’s in everywhere. So then of course you can’t see it. You can’t smell it, but it’s deadly. But only me, Professor Kendi, can find it—if you buy my book.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
