A Fox News panel largely heaped praise on former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech closing out the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday.
Dana Perino, Chris Wallace, Juan Williams, and Brit Hume all had nice things to say about Obama’s remarks during a discussion with anchors Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier. Former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile was the only one to deliver a solely negative critique.
“Very difficult to try to connect with an audience without an actual audience there with you, but she has the ability to connect with people through the screen. And you just got the sense that when you talk about authenticity, she has it in spades,” Perino said, noting how all the speeches and performances during this year’s convention are being conducted virtually amid the coronavirus pandemic. “She has that voice, she has clarity, and she knows what she is out there wanting to do. And she was trying to get everybody to really focus, and then, she had a call to action: Ask for your ballot tonight. I think that the DNC, if they look over the course of the night, the first virtual convention of our history, I think they would say that Michelle Obama stuck the landing.”
Wallace agreed with Perino, who was a White House press secretary under George W. Bush.
“It’s interesting. Michelle Obama, as she said, doesn’t like politics, and she said that this speech was her main contribution to the Biden campaign. It was a heck of a contribution,” Wallace said.
“She really flayed, sliced, and diced Donald Trump talking about the chaos and confusion and lack of empathy, especially coming from this president and from this White House,” the Fox News Sunday anchor added. “Spoke more about the deficits of Donald Trump than the pluses of Joe Biden, but did talk about especially, not so much policies, but especially his empathy, what he has been through, and his care for average Americans. She said we have to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it. And again, very practical, not just, you know, this is what your feelings should be, but you gotta get out, you gotta vote. You got to convince your neighbors to vote. This was a very effective speech.”
Williams said Obama outdid her speech from the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
“I didn’t know how she could outperform what she did in 2016. We all remember: ‘When they go low, we go high.’ But she really did it. You know, Dana said she stuck it, Chris said that this was a speech that came from the heart,” Williams said.
“I heard it like the son. I thought she spoke like a mother, like a stern mother, like a tiger mom saying to you, ‘This is important. This is something that’s important to our family. This is who we are in this family. This is our identity. We have empathy. We understand compassion.’ — and, you know, I’m just paraphrasing her here — ‘We haven’t been lying to you. This is who America — these are the values and the principles that Americans stand for, and that’s why we speak this way to our children.’ I am surprised at how penetrating I felt it to be. I really thought that was a great speech,” he added.
Hume, who called the speech “very good,” did note that Obama’s remarks were “laced with distortions and exaggerations” but noted how “that’s what we expect in political rhetoric.”
Another person who shared criticism was Brazile, who complained about how Obama did not mention Sen. Kamala Harris, who is Biden’s running mate, when asked about it.
“I was a little bit concerned. I was waiting — she kept talking about Joe Biden, and she knows Joe Biden very well, but she also knows Kamala Harris, one of the first to endorse Barack Obama when he ran,” Brazile said.
“So, I was disappointed, but I just heard that perhaps she taped the speech before the announcement, but I am disappointed that we did not hear about Kamala Harris. The first black first lady of the United States did not mention the first black female ever to be on the major party ticket. So, I am a little disappointed that I didn’t hear that,” she added.
