JD Vance downplays racist remark about Michelle Obama at White House UFC event

“I work in politics, people say crazy stuff all the time,” the U.S. Vice President said during a podcast interview with “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

Vice President JD Vance downplayed the racist insult hurled at former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama at a White House UFC event last month during a recent podcast interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience.”

“I work in politics, people say crazy stuff all the time,” Vance told Rogan, who emceed the “UFC Freedom 250” event on the White House South Lawn on June 14, when MMA fighter Josh Hokit said, “Michelle Obama is a man. Am I right, America?!” 

Despite the public condemnation, Vance argued the reactions to the racist and transphobic insult were overblown.

“People lost their minds about it,” said the vice president, who recalled his communications team worried he would be asked about the incident during his appearance on “The View” two days later.

Despite Vance’s downplaying of the controversy, Rogan said it was “not the best thing to say at the White House.”

Vance replied, “Fair, but the reaction to it to me was still totally disproportionate. Dude, people say stuff all the time. I work in a business where, obviously, people make life-and-death decisions all the time. And I’m always a little bit caught off guard by the culture that just overreacts.”

The vice president, who fiercely defended his Indian wife against racist attacks from the far-right, added, “The worst you could say is, ‘Oh, that was an offensive comment,’ and you get on with the rest of your life. Like, that’s the worst that you could say. The people who really flip out about it and kind of lose their minds, I don’t understand that.”

Calling a Black woman a “man” comes with a dark racist history and has long been used to dehumanize Black women through historical racist stereotypes, similar to depicting African Americans as apes. Ironically, President Donald Trump was embroiled in controversy after he posted a video depicting former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama as apes, refusing to apologize for what the White House described as a mistake made by a staffer.

As theGrio previously reported, Josh Hokit refused to apologize for the racist and sexist insult of America’s first Black U.S. First Lady.

“I thought I was giving her a compliment,” Hokit said during a podcast interview on “The Ariel Helwani Show.”

“Michelle Obama being a man, that’s like, uh, she knows how to deal with adversity, you know, she knows how to work hard like a man,” said the professional fighter. “I thought it was a perfect opportunity to, you know, show the world how great this country is with, uh, with the freedom of speech…in other parts of the world, you say something like that, you’re not here to speak.”

Former NFL player Cam Newton called the viral insult “tasteless.”

“In our culture, we don’t play about certain individuals,” said Newton. “Certain people are untouchable, or what they will call it in another culture, a made man or in this case a made woman.”

He continued, “If you utter anything disrespectful about an Obama, it don’t matter if it’s the daughters, it don’t matter if it’s the wife. It doggone don’t matter if it’s the president. If you talk about their dogs, it is in question. They’re some good people, they served this country well, and they’re innocent bystanders.”