Kevin O’Leary, the Canadian Shark Tank investor who has been palling around with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in recent weeks, complained at length on Fox News about former first lady Michelle Obama’s decision to skip the president-elect’s inauguration.
On the Fox News midday show Outnumbered, O’Leary reacted to Obama’s decision, which, a source close to her told People, came because she is “not one to plaster on a pleasant face and pretend for protocol’s sake.”
“This tradition has gone on for over a hundred years. This is what presidents do—and their wives—on inauguration day,” O’Leary claimed, adding later that it was “wrong” for Trump to choose not to attend President Joe Biden’s swearing-in four years ago.
“This is the holiest day of politics. It is the transition of power. You have to respect it,” he went on, glossing over Trump’s efforts to thwart the results of the 2020 election and his refusal to concede. “I don’t like what she’s doing here. I’m against it. I think it’s wrong.”
The history between the Obamas and Trump goes back more than a decade, after Trump spent years pushing the racist “birther” conspiracy theory that her husband wasn’t born in the United States.
Still, to O’Leary, Obama’s absence is “wrong” because it runs counter to the nation’s ethos.
“It takes away from the institution of freedom and what the signal to the world is,” he said, before talking up what he believed America’s “number one export” to be.
“I say this over and over again. It’s not energy. It’s not technology. The number one expert is the American Dream. That’s why people come here. This messes with that,” O’Leary insisted, implying that potential immigrants could actually be dissuaded from coming to the U.S. simply by the former first lady not being at the Capitol for a few hours next week.
