Fox Host Defends Calling Michelle Obama Fat

Keith Ablow

Fox News host Keith Ablow defended his attack on First Lady Michelle Obama's weight, telling Politico that it was “hypocrisy” for her to act as a “role model” on diet when she “has not been consistently a picture of fitness.”

Ablow came under fire for his comments on the August 12 edition of Fox's Outnumbered, where he argued that Michelle Obama is not a credible voice on school nutrition because “she needs to drop a few” pounds. Even one of Ablow's colleagues at Fox, Janice Dean, criticized his remarks, tweeting “please keep your comments about women 'dropping a few' to yourself.”

Nevertheless the next day Ablow told Politico that he was “not taking food advice from an American who dislikes America” and “has not been consistently a picture of fitness”:

“I do dislike hypocrisy and I really do believe that people speaking about diet should be role models themselves, and I'm not sure if the First Lady is that role model,” Ablow said in an interview.

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“I'm not taking food advice from an American who dislikes America, who in many photographs during her tenure as First Lady is obviously not fit, and who has a record of saying things that show that she's two-faced,” Ablow said Wednesday. “This should be obvious, I don't know why it isn't.”

Ablow is standing by his comments and saying that people “should be less sensitive about talking about [weight].”

One reason for his criticism, he says, relates to consistency.

“It happens to be the case that the First Lady during her tenure has not been consistently a picture of fitness,” he said. “That's all, it is just a fact.”

Michelle Obama has made fighting childhood obesity a cornerstone of her time in the White House, helping to put in place federal school lunch standards that emphasize healthy eating.