On Wednesday night, Jillian Michaels, fitness instructor and host of the defunct reality show, The Biggest Loser, was on the show CNNLive Tonight, hosted by Abby Phillip, where she showed that the brain is clearly not a muscle. It all started when someone let a reality show host get into politics—hmmmm, that sounds familiar.
On the Aug. 13 episode, right-wing lesbian Jillian had a meltdown about race when the panelists began discussing Trump’s hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center for the Arts and the Smithsonian. The commentary focused on Trump’s editing of Smithsonian exhibits to coddle his ego. At which point Jillian defends Trump (it is important to note that Jillian hasn’t always been up Trump’s asshole.) In fact, in 2016, she was disgusted by his comments about his daughter, but on an episode of her podcast, whose name is not worth mentioning, she does discuss Epstein, but not Trump.
During a heated point of the segment, Jillian presents a small stack of papers where she pretends to flip through them, noting that the problem with the exhibits is that they portray “white people bad.” She states, “Every single exhibit…. I have a list of every single one.” It is unclear if she was stating that every single Smithsonian exhibit displayed the words, “white people bad,” or just the exhibits on her list, but what is known is the exhibit about the mass migration of Latin Americans, she referenced on her appearance, and used on X to justify her stupidity perspective, according to her own photo, does not mention race. A few hot breaths later, Jillian brings up the topic of an exhibit which examines the conversation about and history of trans people in sports. She becomes visibly irritated at the idea of even having a conversation about the conversation, because as a masculine-leaning lesbian, it’s as simple as XX/XY, and museums are not supposed to document important cultural conversations and current events.
After ranting about the exhibits that never mention race, Jillian looks at host Abby Phillip and fires off, “Everything is racialized, just like you are doing to me now,” to which Phillip is understandably incredulous, because Michaels was the only one who brought up race.
To bring up race and then tell a Black woman that she is the one racializing the conversation is entitled behavior and gaslighting.
Speaking of race, Jillian is the mother of a Haitian-born Black girl named Lukensia. While transracial adoption has worked well for many families, many white adopters act as if they are doing the whole of Black people a favor; instead of bringing a child in need into a loving home, they expect some sort of praise from society, and in many cases, it serves their feelings of superiority through white saviorism. Jillian’s conduct and doubling down on incorrect information are indicative of someone who thinks that, because they are raising a Black child, they are equipped to have salient conversations about race.
Jillian doesn’t speak out about racism on social media; she doesn’t care about oppression; she just cares that white people don’t take accountability for the blame. Jillian was also upset that slavery is always blamed on one race, but did not go into detail about what other races were responsible for slavery. However, following her appearance, she went on social media to double down on the myth she first stated on the show, which is that less than 2% of white people owned slaves, when it was closer to 25%. She does not cite her source, but also leaves out important information like how many people in the same household shared slaves, how slaves were leased by non-slave owners and how many white people who may not have directly owned slaves still benefited from their labor in other ways. For some reason, she thinks slavery was some niche activity, that is, something that white people did sparingly.
Here’s the thing: even in her incorrect regurgitation of this myth, she’s forgetting that those slaves still amounted to millions of people. Even though her daughter’s ancestors may have stopped before the coastline of the American South, she is still a product of the same cruelty that was ubiquitous in the United States and is still subject to its aftershocks. Understandably people who are smart criticized her post, with one person writing, that she is “denigrating ALL humanity, by trivializing what was done to others,” Jillian’s response was “I’m denigrating all of humanity by pointing out that 98% of American white people in 1860 didn’t perpetrate slavery… and in fact man white Americans died to end it?”
The year she uses is 1860, clearly not the most popular year to own a slave, but alas, Jillian is eager for white people to take credit for ending slavery, but does not want white people to take accountability for starting it.
What a big loser.
