Former Fox News host turned podcaster Megyn Kelly has ignited backlash with a new rant that took direct aim at former President Barack Obama. On the September 13 episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, she called Obama a “slick snake” and claimed that he created the conditions that produced Donald Trump.

Kelly Targets Obama

Kelly told her audience that Americans “haven’t felt like ourselves since Barack Obama.” She argued that Obama injected race into politics, lied about healthcare reform, and crossed lines by commenting on legal cases before they played out. Kelly insisted that Trump was not divisive but rather “the antidote” to what she described as Obama’s destructive influence.

Her comments quickly spread online, drawing both outrage and ridicule. Clips of the segment circulated widely on Threads and X, where critics accused Kelly of voicing long-standing racial resentment. “Saying Obama was divisive means having the nerve to be Black,” one user wrote. Another added, “Your racism is showing.”

By blaming Obama for the divisiveness, Kelly appeared to echo what many observers have long argued. Trump’s rise in 2016 was in part a backlash against the election of the first Black president. Commentators recalled CNN’s Van Jones describing Trump’s victory as a “white lash” against a changing America.

Kelly framed the moment as if Obama had broken the nation’s sense of self. Her words suggested that the simple fact of a Black man holding the presidency unsettled a segment of white America that later flocked to Trump.

Divisiveness Compared to Trump

Critics highlighted the hypocrisy in Kelly’s framing. Obama consistently leaned on unity and calm, even in moments of deep racial tension. After the killing of Trayvon Martin, he urged Americans to see themselves in the teenager rather than fuel division. In 2015, following the Charleston church massacre by white supremacist Dylann Roof, Obama delivered a unifying eulogy at Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral, calling for grace and reconciliation before leading the congregation in singing “Amazing Grace.” Trump, by contrast, repeatedly attacked the press, branded opponents as enemies, and encouraged hostility toward immigrants and Muslims. Even after the horrific killing of Charlie Kirk, Trump chose to blame the radical left rather than seek to unify the country.

To suggest Obama was more divisive than Trump shows Kelly’s short memory. Trump once demeaned her on national television, saying she had ‘blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,’ a remark that captured his hostility far more than Obama’s measured tone ever did

Beyond the Rant

Obama’s presidency was not without flaws. His failure to prosecute bankers after the financial crisis and his moderate policy choices disappointed many of his own supporters. Yet Kelly’s rant reduced those complexities to a familiar racial scapegoat. Her suggestion that Trump was the “answer” to Obama revealed how deeply race continues to shape America’s political divisions.

Kelly’s attack on Obama may have been intended as sharp commentary, but it exposed more than her dislike for a former president. It laid bare how racial resentment fueled the Trump movement and continues to animate parts of the American right. By calling Obama a “slick snake” and praising Trump as an “antidote,” she did more than critique policy. She voiced the underlying truth that for many, the election of a Black president was the wound they never accepted.

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