As with virtually every political figure in recent memory, Michelle Obama has opened herself up to criticism and mockery from those with whom she disagrees.
And some of those taunts have taken the form of conjecture about her gender, as evidenced by the post-fight remarks from the winner of a UFC event at the White House last month.
As The Hill reported, Vice President J.D. Vance recently had some thoughts on the left’s supposedly righteous indignation:
The vice president talked about UFC fighter Josh Hokit in a nearly three-hour interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” Hokit had told a crowd at the White House during the fight last month, “Michelle Obama is a man, am I right America?”
ADVERTISEMENTHost Joe Rogan moved on to the topic after asking what was more shocking, Hokit’s remark or his armbar fighting techniques, prompting Vance to laugh and say, “Definitely the armbar part.” Rogan then pushed back on the remark about Obama, saying it was not “the best thing to say at the White House.”
“Fair, but the reaction to it to me was still totally disproportionate,” Vance replied. “Dude, people say stuff all the time. OK, I live –– 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, when clearly the thing that Josh is trying to get is the overreaction in the first place, right?”
Vance said people can say the comment was “offensive … and you get on with the rest of your life,” but people, instead, “kind of lose their minds.” He compared Hokit’s remark with the racist tropes said by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe at the start of a Trump rally in Madison Square Garden in October 2024, where Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating pile of garbage.”
The exchange sparked some social media discussion:
It's just the left looking for anything negative to pin on the right….even a joke , whether you liked it or not.
— joan (@J58golf) July 15, 2026
Meanwhile, here’s what Michelle Obama has been publicly griping about:
Michelle Obama gripes that media fixated on her outfits rather than her "powerful" oratory.
"It wouldn't matter what I said. The article would start with what I had on. And I realized, oh, this is how they do women in politics."
The perpetual grievance tour continues. pic.twitter.com/4CUGfi6f7a
— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) July 15, 2026
Here’s another newsworthy clip from the interview:
JD Vance: I've looked at most of the Epstein files. I've never seen a single piece of credible evidence that Trump ever engaged in wrongdoing. pic.twitter.com/DqGfZvj7Lu
— FactPost (@factpostnews) July 15, 2026
The Daily Beast added this:
At the time Hokit made the comment, CNN reported that Trump was “seen smiling briefly.” Rogan, who was in the ring to serve as UFC Freedom 250’s master of ceremonies, said only, “Ladies and gentlemen, Josh Hokit,” when Hokit finished his remarks.
Since then, Rogan argued that the White House should have known what it was getting into by inviting Hokit to fight at the event, and stopped short of condemning the comment outright. Still, even he did not act as oblivious as Vance on Wednesday, as the vice president insisted he was “still shocked” that people were “really fired up about it.”
“Well, I kind of understand it because it’s at the White House,” Rogan said. “First of all, a cage fight at the White House is crazy already. I mean, if he said, ‘Michelle Obama’s a man’ at the T-Mobile Arena in Vegas, it’s like, OK.” He added that the comment was “not the best thing to say.”
And here’s the full interview:
Join the conversation!
Please share your thoughts about this article below. We value your opinions, and would love to see you add to the discussion!