A Look Inside Obama’s ‘Androgynous Mind’

Hey guys, it’s Liz Wheeler. I hope everyone is having a happy Labor Day weekend, a fun and relaxing weekend. I know I am. What I have for you today is one of my favorite episodes and one of your favorite episodes. You guys were obsessed with this. I think we all really liked this episode because it was kind of juicy, but it was all based in fact, which is the best kind of discussion to have. So I wanted to watch this with you today again, without further ado. Here it is. Is Barack Obama Gay? This has to be the weirdest title of a show that we’ve ever used. I have to confess you guys that this has been a rumor for a long time. You’ve all seen these rumors of Obama being gay and Michelle Obama being a man, and I’ve always dismissed these with a huge eye roll, shrugging them off. 

I actually have always found ’em a little bit annoying. I thought they’re, they’re so lacking in substance that it distracts from the very real criticism that we can leverage against Obama. But hey, maybe I’m going to owe an apology to all of y’all who have been talking about this for a long time. There’s a new article that’s out in Tablet Magazine written by a man named David Samuels. David Samuels interviewed Obama’s biographer historian David Garrow, who wrote The Definitive Biography on Obama. But what’s funny about this is no one really paid attention to this definitive biography of Obama because Obama wrote his own autobiography, and his own autobiography has been a wild bestseller, dreams of my Father. We’ve all heard it. We all see it in every bookstore that we ever go in. But David Garrow, who wrote Obama’s real biography, essentially contends that Obama revised history that he whitewashed who he was to make himself look like. 

Well, this princeling that just rose from this terrible oppressed situation and became president of the United States. And I want to read a little bit of this article with you because there’s some really fascinating things that he wrote. So this is what David Samuels writes. He writes, there’s a fascinating passage in rising star David Garrell’s comprehensive biography of Barack Obama’s early years in which the historian examines Obama’s account in dreams from my father of his breakup with his longtime Chicago girlfriend, Sheila Masi Yeager. In Dreams Obama describes a passionate disagreement following a play by African-American playwright August Wilson, in which the young protagonist defends his incipient embrace of black racial consciousness against his girlfriend’s white identified liberal universalism. As readers, we know that the stakes of this decision would become more than simply personal. The black American man that Obama wills into being in this scene would go on to marry a black woman from the south side of Chicago named Michelle Robinson. 

And after a meteoric rise win election as the first black president of the United States, yet what Garrow documented after tracking down and interviewing Sheila Myoshia Jager was an explosive fight over a very different subject. And I think, guys, here’s where Obama’s revisionist history comes to light and Jaeger’s telling the Quill that ended the couple’s relationship was not about self-identification as a black man. And the impetus was not a play about the American Black experience, but an exhibit at Chicago’s Spurs Institute about the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichman. He has, of course, exactly what you would think it’s about the Holocaust. He goes on to say, at the time that Obama and Sheila visited the Spurts Institute, Chicago politics was being roiled by a black mayoral aid named Steve Coley, who in a series of lectures organized by Louis Farrakhan’s, nation of Islam accused Jewish doctors in Chicago of infecting black babies with AIDS as part of a genocidal plot against African-Americans. 

The episode highlighted a deep rift within the city’s power echelons with some prominent black officials supporting Coakley and others calling for his firing. In Jager, Obama’s ex-girlfriend’s recollection, what set off the quarrel that precipitated the end of the couple’s relationship was Obama’s stubborn refusal after seeing the exhibit and in the swirl of this cochlea affair to condemn black racism, while acknowledging that Obama’s embrace of a black identity had created some degree of distance between the couple. She insisted that what upset her that day was Obama’s inability to condemn Coley’s comments. It was not Obama’s blackness that bothered her, but that he would not condemn antisemitism. So I find this fascinating because think about the photograph that was hidden during Obama’s 2007, 2008 presidential campaign the first time that he ran for office. What photograph was hidden from us? The photograph of Barack Obama as a senator standing next to who standing with the Congressional Black Caucus, who had invited Louis Farrakhan to come and speak to them. 

And this photograph was hidden from us by the mainstream media, the Chicago Democrat machine, because why? Because they didn’t want Barack Obama associated with Louis Farrakhan, a rabid antisemite who they thought Obama had associated with too closely. And its very valid criticism to condemn someone who has willingly associated with a rabid antisemite like Louis Farrakhan. So let’s keep reading this article. No doubt, Obama’s evolving race-based self-consciousness did distance him from Jager. In the end, the couple broke up. Yet it is revealing to read Obama’s account of the breakup in dreams against the very different account that Jager offers in Obama’s account. He was the particularist embracing a personal meaning for the black experience that Jaeger, the Universalist refused to grant in Jaeger’s account. The polls of the argument are nearly but not quite reversed. It is Obama who appears to minimize Jewish anxiety about blood libels coming from the black community. 

His particularism mattered, hers didn’t. While Obama defined himself as a realist or pragmatist. The episode reads like a textbook Evasion of Moral Responsibility, whose version of the is correct. Who knows? The bridge between the two accounts is Obama’s emerging attachment to blackness, which required him to fall in love with and marry a black woman in Obama’s account. His attachment to blackness is truthful and noble and Yeager’s account. His claims are instrumental and selfish. He grants Particularism to the experience and suffering of his own tribe while denying it to others in evaluating the truth. This is so interesting too. In evaluating the truthfulness of these two competing accounts, it seems worth noting that Jager is something more than a woman scorned by a man who would later become the president of the United States. Obama asked her to marry him twice. She refused him both times before going on to achieve her own high level professional success. 

A student at the Great University of Chicago anthropologist, Marshall Salin Jaeger is a professor of East Asian studies at Oberlin College, et cetera, et cetera. In contrast, dreams from my father as Garrow shows throughout. Rising Star is much a work of dreamy literary fiction as it is an attempt to document Obama’s early life. That might be the only sentence in this entire article that I think is a little bit soft Dreams from my father, is a complete revisionist history that’s been proved. So this is where it starts to get really interesting scholarship aside tablet rights. There’s another reason to assume that Jager would be less likely to misremember an incident involving race and antisemitism than Obama. As it turns out, Jaeger’s paternal grandparents were members of the Dutch resistance, whose role in sheltering a Jewish child in their home for three years led to their recognition as righteous among the nations. 

In that context, at least it seems quite likely that Jager would remember the particulars of a fight with Obama related to antisemitism and be turned off by his response. While Obama’s version of the fight has the feel of an anecdote positioned, if not invented, to buttress the character arc of the protagonist of his memoir, which in turn positioned him for a career in public life, perhaps the most revealing thing about Jagers account for fight with Obama though is that not one reporter in America bothered to interview her before David Garrow found her near the end of Obama’s presidency. As Obama’s live-in girlfriend and closest friend during the 1980s, Jaeger is probably the single most informed incredible source about the inner life of a young man whose election was accompanied by hopes of sweeping, peaceful social change in America, a hope that ended with the election of Donald Trump, et cetera, et cetera. 

He goes on to talk about the mainstream media’s complete lack of curiosity about this woman who was Obama’s first partner. You may even describe this woman as the love of Obama’s life. And then he talks about this accusation that Obama is gay. It’s hard for me even to say this because it has been a conspiracy theory for so long, but I’m going to read you this in just a second. I’m going to read you this line from this article. It’s quite stunning. So then, I mean, you can see how far down in the article that this bombshell revelation is buried. Let me read it to you. Yet, when it came out six years ago, rising Star, the definitive biography of Obama was mostly ignored. As a result, it’s most scandalous and perhaps revelatory passages such as Obama’s long letter to another girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with men. 

Read today to people who are more familiar with the Obama myth than the historical record read like Partisan Bigotry. But David Garrow is hardly a hack whose work can or should be dismissed on partisan grounds. He’s among the country’s most credible and celebrated civil rights historians, the author of the F B I and Martin Luther King Jr. And Bearing the Cross, which wons the Pulitzer Prize for biography. And one of the three historian consultants who animated the monumental p b s documentary, eyes on the Prize, as well as the author of a landmark history of abortion rights, liberty, and sexuality. And this guy David Garrow, I’m going to read this sentence again just because it’s so stunning. When it came out six years ago, rising Star was mostly ignored. As a result, it’s most scandalous and perhaps revelatory passages such as Obama’s Long letter to another girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with men. 

Read today to people who are more familiar with the Obama myth and historical record read today, like partisan bigotry. So let’s just pause there for one second. So Barack Obama, the former president of the United States, a Democrat before he was president, before he was married to Michelle, before anyone knew anything about him, was writing love letters, handwritten love letters to a girlfriend about his fantasies of having sex with other men. It’s kind of hard for me to know how to process this. This is the train of my thought when I first read this headline. I almost didn’t click on the article because I thought it was click bait. I thought it was just every so often, every couple months, this circulates, oh, Michelle Obama’s a man, Obama’s gay. And I’m just like, okay, why don’t we talk about Obama’s ties to critical race theorist? Derek Bell, why don’t we talk about Obama’s radical ideology? 

Why don’t we talk about Obama, how Obama’s probably the one controlling Joe Biden. This is my reaction when I usually see headlines about this, but this was getting enough play that I clicked on it and I read this entire article. As you can see, it is a beautifully written piece by David Samuels. He’s an incredible writer. Actually, I didn’t know that much about him before I read this, but his writing is fantastic. He’s writing about this historian who wrote a definitive biography of Obama. But the thing is, no one cared about this biography of Obama that was written at the end of his presidency because Obama had already cemented in the minds of the American people, or perhaps not the minds of the American people, but the minds of the American media, the mainstream media, who he was. He had already decided how he wanted to present himself to the country. 

And the mainstream media had said, okay, yes sir, we’ll talk about you exactly the way you want to be talked about. We won’t do any due diligence. We won’t look up any of your college records. We won’t look up your thesis. We won’t look up who you supported during college. We won’t talk to your old girlfriends. We’ll just believe this seemingly fictional account of your life that you wrote and published right before you wanted to run for president. So even though this book came out a long time ago, people didn’t really pay attention to it. But inside this book, written by a very reputable historian, let alone biographer, it mentions a letter to a girlfriend about Obama having fantasies of having sex with men. Now, maybe the question, and this is where my mind went after I established that this actually is credible, that this is not something that you see on a meme on Facebook that has no sourcing. 

You can’t trace it back to its origin. Once I established the fact that this seemed credible, I thought, wow, this is quite something. We should be talking about this because why does this matter? Why is this significant? What implications does this have for our nation? And the implications this has for our nation is because Joe Biden is not running his own presidency. And while a lot of people point the finger at Dr. Jill Biden for controlling him, and she is certainly complicit in the elder abuse of her husband, she could say no and they would have to stop. She’s not the one that is pulling the strings on the policy and the political choices that Joe Biden and his administration are engaging in. That would be Obama. That’s Barack Obama. In fact, back in 2020, Barack Obama admitted that he would like to do this to a Democrat who was in the Oval Office. You can take a listen to this clip. 

If I could make an arrangement where I had a stand-in a front man or front woman and they had an earpiece in and I was just in my basement in my sweats looking through the stuff, and then I could sort of deliver the lines, but somebody else was doing all the talking and ceremony, I’d be fine with that because I found the work fascinating. I mean, I write about the, even on my worst days, I found puzzling out. 

Can you believe that that aired three years ago? Do you remember that? How much play did that video clip get? Did it go viral? Not so much. Back in 2020, Obama talked about the fact that he wanted to put an earpiece in someone, have a front man in the White House or a front woman. He said, let’s make sure to throw that equity in there and that he wanted to make the calls. That’s exactly what’s happening with Joe Biden. That’s what we’re seeing in front of our very eyes. So the implications of this article that claims that Obama is anti-Semitic, that he dismisses black racism and that he had fantasies about having sex with other men, the implications of this are Obama is still in control. Everything that we see coming from the Joe Biden White House is coming through that earpiece into Joe Biden from Barack Obama. 

Now, I know that that sounds kind of funny. It sounds like that movie where there was a body double of the president, but the theory is the same thing that Barack Obama is the one making these calls. So what do we see coming from the Joe Biden White House? We see racism in the form of critical race theory. We see complete dismissal of antisemitism, especially attacks on religious Jews in this country. And we see weirdo queer theory, transgender ideology, to the point where the White House is calling for early transitions of children. So this queer agenda that we see coming from the White House makes a little bit more sense when you think of it not as coming from Joe Biden, someone who just a couple years ago before it was politically expedient for him, claimed that he supported marriage between one man and one woman. 

It makes a little bit more sense when you hear it, when you think of it as coming from Obama who once wrote a letter to his girlfriend fantasizing about having sex with men. I mean, maybe it’s no wonder that that girlfriend quickly became an ex-girlfriend after receiving a letter like that. The implications of this are quite something. Now, Elon Musk also made an announcement recently that’s very significant, and I’ve criticized Elon Musk a lot, and I want to explain the reason why I criticize Elon Musk a lot and the reason that I think he’s one of the most powerful, influential, and positively influential people in our country because he’s standing up for people who are facing real discrimination. So Elon Musk has offered to pay the legal fees of any person who has faced discrimination at their place of employment for something that they’ve posted on X. 

If we could put this post on the screen, I’m so delighted by this that I’ve decided to cave to Elon Musk and actually call Twitter X and to call it a post. I was kind of resistant to this at the beginning because I feel attached to Twitter. I feel attached to the idea of a tweet. I like the little birdie, but man, this is what he tweeted. He said, or this is what he posted, excuse me. He said, if you were unfairly treated by your employer due to posting or liking something on this platform, we will fund your legal bill No limit. Please let us know this post on X. See, I can do it, has been viewed over 83 million times, 83 million times. And the best response to this, of course, and we’ll get to the commentary on Elon Musk in just a second, but the best response to this came from Donald Trump Jr. 

Can we bring that tweet up? This is funny, not funny. He goes, I’ve got a big one for you. Where do I send the bill? And I laughed when I read that. But also funny, not funny because Donald Trump is facing, I mean, he was indicted on charges related to January 6th because of things he posted on what was formerly known as Twitter. He was banned from Twitter over January 6th. Gina Carrano also qualifies. There are a lot of people who have gotten banned or not banned, who have gotten fired or faced discrimination at work based on what they’ve posted on Twitter. There are also a lot of people who are anonymous on X now who don’t put their real names because they fear they will face retaliation at work. They can’t afford to do that because they need to make money to support their family, and so they stay anonymous even though they would not like to be anonymous. 

They’d like to be able to present themselves. So here’s what I’ll say. I’ve criticized Elon Musk a lot over things that he’s done on Twitter, like hiring Linda Jaina as C E O. I think that’s a mistake, and I’ve been very upfront about the fact that I think that that’s a mistake. She’s too closely tied to the World Economic Forum. She doesn’t believe in free speech, and she’s challenged Elon Musk on wanting to make X the public square of the internet. And the reason that I criticize him more than I praise him is first of all, that’s what I do here. That’s my job, is to give critiques of things. It’s not to sit here and pat people on the back, but the reason that it’s an effective thing to do with Elon Musk to give criticism or to give feedback is because a, he listens to it. 

Unlike politicians who are supposed to be tied to their constituents and what we feel, politicians don’t listen to us. Elon Musk actually does read what we say and does listen, but also he doesn’t retaliate against people who have different beliefs. So in the old Twitter, maybe you didn’t criticize Twitter too much on Twitter because then you would get shadow banned. Then you get penalized. Maybe you’d see a strike on your account you didn’t criticize because you would face that discrimination. But there’s a comfortable feeling and openness and empowerment when Elon Musk as the c e O of X or whatever his title is, the owner of X, not only listens, but doesn’t, doesn’t punish you for your opinions, even if your opinions are critical of him. So I think that that has actually gott more criticism of him from people on the right, like me, people who overall in the big scheme of things, if you zoom out in the big picture, are so grateful for what he’s done. 

Elon Musk, I don’t agree with every ideological point that Elon Musk says or every political policy that he stands for. We do have differences, but I think that he is one of the most powerful people in this country, not because he’s the richest person, not because of Tesla or SpaceX, not even because he bought a social media company, not even because he bought Twitter. He’s one of the most powerful people in our country because he’s not afraid of the woke crowd criticizing what he’s doing. And he recognized the root of how the woke crowd was trying to enforce their wokeness on us. So on Twitter, they were stifling any dissent. You weren’t allowed to talk about covid. You weren’t allowed to talk about trance. You weren’t allowed to talk about election integrity because those were the three sacred cows of the left. Those were the areas that they were using to violate our freedom, to control us, to morph the United States from a free country into a Marxist utopia. 

And Elon Musk said, Nope, I’m going to cut that to the core. I’m going to make sure that people can talk about these things and I don’t care. Then if you can now edit a tweet, which I don’t like, I don’t care if tweets can go on and on and on, even though there’s supposed to be a tiny little micro blogging, I don’t care about any of that stuff. All of my criticism means nothing. When you think about how important he is to our country, and now taking this a step further, that employers socially have retaliated against employees for things that they’ve liked. Retweeted posts their opinions on social media. In fact, a lot of people lock their social media accounts when they’re for a job or use a fake username if they have a job where they know their politics aren’t welcome, and Elon Musk is saying, I don’t want you to do that. 

I want you to be you on here, and if you face discrimination, we will fund your legal bills. I mean, the only other person that I can think of who’s doing this to the extent that Elon Musk is now offering to do that would be Harmit Dylan, any college student who faces discrimination, she is there. She defends you. Any religious liberty violation that someone in the workplace experiences, she is there. She defends you. Elon Musk is now doing this on social media. It is hard for me to state exactly how powerful of not just an influence, but how important this battleground of the culture war is and how Elon Musk knows exactly where to hit the left, the woke left where it hurts. I’m incredibly grateful for him for doing this. It’s an incredible thing to watch. A couple of years from now, our country is not going to be in as dire of a situation as it is now, partially because of what Elon Musk has done on social media. 

So the US Women’s soccer team lost to Sweden in the World Cup, and this was very interesting for me to observe the videos of how the Women’s World Cup lost their match. Were particularly telling, we can show this on the screen. So Megan Rapinoe is the, what color hair does she have today? She used to have pink hair. I think she has green hair now. She’s the green haired lesbian woke lesbian, and this is her penalty kick against Sweden. She missed it, and therefore the US lost their match because it’s sudden death with these penalty kicks. Megan Rapinoe is the one who hashtag equal pay. We do the same thing that the men, she’s just the wokes of the woke. She thinks men who identifies women should be allowed to play on the Women’s World Cup team. Bright as, by the way, this was her retirement match. 

It was. They lost, and so now she’s finished playing soccer, so she wants men to play on the women’s team, but only after it won’t impact her anymore. And it was interesting to me to observe how many of you on Twitter were celebrating the fact that the US lost? Because to me, it is not that I see both sides of this. It feels weird to me to celebrate when an American team, an American sports team in an international arena, meaning when they’re playing under the banner of the American flag, when an American team loses. It feels weird to me to celebrate that because I want the US to win. Of course, I have national pride. I want the US to win. At the same time, it’s amazing to me to see the depth of passion that so many of you feel about the dangers of wokeness to the point where when we think of the US women’s soccer team, we think of the individual players and reject their wokeness even more than we embrace the idea that this is a team that’s supposed to represent America and the players. 

While yes, it’s fun to watch certain players who have certain skills, especially standouts, it’s not so much about the individual players, but the flag that we represent. So it was a little weird to me to see so many people saying, oh, well, the anti-American team lost. Ha never laughed so hard in my life. In fact, some people were even calling Megan Rapinoe the woke choke because she’s supposed to be the best player on the women’s soccer team, and she did. She choked the moment of truth. They lost because she missed that penalty kick at the end. And I’m interested in your thoughts on this because I can’t quite bring myself to celebrate the loss because it is an American team on an international stage, and yet I appreciate, I deeply appreciate the depth of passion and even the anger that so many Americans feel against wokeness. 

I actually find this response, this response, celebrating loss to be encouraging because I like to see how many people feel this strongly that wokeness is an existential threat to our country, that they are willing to overlook just the fun of sports in their attempt to eradicate wokeness from our society, including from, well, an American team where the star is rejecting the American flag and the national anthem. This is actually, and this is the depth of Megan Rubinos wokeness, right? Remember this because after the game, she was asked what the most rewarding part of playing her long career. She’s like 38 years old or something. What the most rewarding part of playing on the US Women’s soccer team has been throughout her career? And this was her answer. 

Is there a memory that stands out to you right now in this moment? I mean, probably equal pay chance after the final, and I think they were saying equal pay, but could have been saying a lot of things. I think this team has always fought for so much more, and that’s been the most rewarding part for me. Of course, playing in World Cups and winning championships and doing all that, but to know that we’ve used our really special talent to do something that’s really changed the world forever. I think that means the most to me and the players in this locker room here, they’re just getting started. And to all the players that I’ve played with, obviously who know what it’s like to be in the grind, that’s the best part, 

Changed. At least women’s sports forever, since I can only assume the next World Cup, the US women’s soccer team will be composed entirely of men since this is what Megan Rapinoe is advocating for, and as men, I guess we won’t see them lose in this humiliating manner because of the woke loser, Megan Rapinoe, who misses the penalty kick at the end of her career. This is what she stands for. She stands for wokeness. She wants men, literal men, to be on the Women’s World Cup soccer team. That’s so dangerous, so unfair, so anti-woman. It’s not equal anything. Maybe the US Women’s World Cup soccer team would deserve equal pay to the men if their team was composed of entirely men because maybe they would actually get equal viewership and equal advertiser revenue if they played at the level that men do. Remember Megan Rapinoe and her team lost to a U 15 boys team. That means boys under the 15 years old and younger, they lost to because men are physically superior to women in sports. I understand. I totally understand. I empathize with and I relate to the celebration of the US Women’s Soccer team losing the World Cup, although I can’t bring myself to celebrate it because I care more about America than I do about Megan Rapinoe. Thank goodness she is on her way to retirement. Okay, we have time for one more random thing from the internet. Let’s see what we got today. 

You want to keep more of the money you earn, I’m afraid. That’s very selfish. We shall want to tax that away. You want to earn shares in your firm. We can’t have that. The state has to earn your phone. You want to choose where to send your children to school. That’s very divisive. You’ll send your child where we tell you, Mr. President, the trouble with labor is that they’re just not at home with freedom. Socialists don’t like ordinary people choosing, or they might not choose socialism. 

That of course, is Margaret Thatcher mocking wokeness before wokeness was woke. It’s amazing if you dip back into just a little bit of history, open a history book, or in this case, pull up a video from, I mean, not too distant history. You’ll see exactly what has come to fruition now. Margaret Thatcher saw it before it happened. Thank you guys for watching today. Thank you for listening. I’m Liz Wheeler. This is the Liz Wheeler Show.