Fitness influencer and podcast host Jillian Michaels caused a controversy on CNN NewsNight with Abby Phillip last week by appearing to downplay slavery in the United States. Phillip has now shared why she hasn’t joined a chorus of those criticizing the appearance.
While discussing the matter with Pivot host Kara Swisher, Abby Phillip said it’s not her nature to denigrate those who take the time to come on her primetime program.
“I don’t like to talk negatively about guests who come on the show, because I just don’t think that’s good for them,” she shared. “Even when I disagree with people, I respect their right to embarrass themselves on national television. I think it is their right to do that. But I don’t want to disparage people, even when they disparage me — to be quite frank — online.”
Despite her insistence that she doesn’t like to talk negatively about guests, Phillip called Michaels’ argument — which defended President Trump’s determination that exhibits at the Smithsonian were biased against Americans when it came to slavery — “nonsensical”, “ridiculous”, and “ignorant”, among other adjectives.
“It’s embarrassing, more for her than anything else,” said Phillip, who noted that Jillian Michaels admitted she was given talking points for the appearance from the White House.
In the appearance on CNN, Michaels said that slavery had been going on for thousands of years and wasn’t a strictly American issue. She also claimed that less than 2% of Americans owned slaves before the practice was outlawed at the conclusion of the Civil War. However, where the practice was legal, more than a quarter of all households actually owned slaves.
In response to the comments from Abby Phillip, Michaels says she was misunderstood and that she was taken out of context.
“There was no moment where I defended slavery,” Michaels said on her podcast. “I would never. I just said it’s evil, but you can’t lay it all at the feet of one race. There was no moment where I tried to litigate who benefited from slavery in America, and I said, specifically, this has been going on for thousands of years.”
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