Dinesh D’Souza Says Obama Hasn’t Lived the “African American Experience” Because He Grew Up in Hawaii

YouTube


Barack Obama is an African American man. He is black and he was born in Hawaii. He is the president of the United States.

Despite all this, conservative author and convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza tried to convince Fox News host Megyn Kelly on Monday that the president has not lived the “African American experience” for reasons that first included the president not having “descended from slaves on either side of his family.” 

When asked for clarification, considering Obama indeed has “black skin and grew up in America as a black man,” as a rather shocked Kelly correctly noted, D’Souza answered, “Well he grew up in Hawaii.”

“That’s America!” Kelly reminded him. 

Unable to put the breaks on his thought process, D’Souza trailed on with mentions of the president’s past trips to Indonesia and Kenya as further proof he has not lived the true African American experience.

“Oh come on Dinesh! That does not deprive him of the African American experience.”

This all follows a series of bizarre tweets from D’Souza, in which he compared himself to Martin Luther King Jr. and Obama to J. Edgar Hoover. 

Monday’s segment concluded with our momentary hero, Megyn Kelly, asking D’Souza how his time holed up in a community confinement center after being convicted of campaign finance fraud was going. 

 

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate