Fourteen years after then-Fox News star Glenn Beck made headlines by calling Barack Obama a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people,” the right-wing network is still warning its viewers that the ex-president is trying to indoctrinate Americans with his “anti-white” racism.
To prove its point this time around, the conservative cable giant is pointing to the post-apocalyptic film Leave the World Behind, which was produced by Obama’s Higher Ground Productions and currently streaming on Netflix. At one point in the movie, a Black character warns her father about not trusting white people during a disaster.
At the same time, while Fox News stars have tripped over themselves to denounce the film’s supposed anti-white hatred, they have also admitted to having not actually seen the movie that has elicited their full-throated disgust.
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This latest freakout, as is the case with many of these news cycles in the right-wing outrage-industrial complex, bubbled up online when Libs of TikTok and other anti-”woke” culture warriors began sharing context-free clips from the film on social media.
The star-studded film, an adaptation of the 2020 bestselling book of the same name, features Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, and Mahershala Ali. The thriller has been equally polarizing among critics and audiences, with much of the criticism directed at its languid pace, simplistic themes, and frustrating ending. The Daily Beast’s Coleman Spilde, for instance, labeled it an “excruciatingly dull” film that “knows how to amplify tension without answering questions or saying anything new.”
Much of the film’s suspense centers around Julia Roberts’ character’s concern and distrust when, during an explained disaster, a Black man and his daughter show up in the middle of the night at the house her family has rented, claiming to be the owner.
“Amanda’s unrelenting suspicion of G.H. and Ruth keeps the movie on a perpetual boil,” USA Today noted in an interview with the film’s director. “But the motivations behind her sentiments can be seen two ways, at times unflinchingly racist (how can these Black people be the owners of this ultra-fancy vacation home, she suggests) and in others borderline reasonable (why are these strangers showing up at our door at nearly midnight claiming there's a blackout?).”
But it is one particular scene that has raised right-wing hackles. At one point, when it appears that society is fully collapsing, Ruth (played by Myha’la Herrold) turns to her father to issue a warning. “Remember that if the world falls apart, trust should not be doled out easily to anyone, especially white people,” she says to G.H., played by Ali. “Even mom would agree on that.”
After making the rounds on right-wing Twitter, where it was immediately lambasted as “anti-white racism,” the clip soon made its way to Outnumbered, the show that often serves as the testing grounds for Fox News’ culture-war outrages. And because the movie’s director has said the ex-president “gave extensive notes” on the film’s plot and its characters, the rage was solely directed at Obama.
“This scene in particular is being singled out for sowing racial divide,” co-host Emily Compagno grumbled while expressing concern about Obama’s involvement in the film’s production.
Former Trump flack and current Fox News star Kayleigh McEnany then took the ball and ran with it, saying she’d “love to know” whether Obama “was OK” with that line because that “would be a huge problem.” She then connected the flick to one of Fox’s favorite bogeymen.
“It seems to me a major headline when—that’s critical race theory in a nutshell. You are an oppressed or an oppressor based on the color of your skin,” she fumed. “That is the ideology represented by that line. Well, why is that not a headline in all these major newspapers?”
McEnany continued: “I went to Google News and the Variety headline was ‘Barack Obama sends script notes for Netflix’s new disaster, leaving people scared,’ ‘Barack Obama gave major feedback on the Leave the World Behind script.’ I’m noting that, basically, when he advised on how the end of the world would look, the director got scared. That’s the headline! Why isn’t the headline… the former president reviewed a script embedded with this racist line and how did it get through?!”
Co-host Molly Line, however, demurred on joining the pile-on, noting that she hadn’t actually seen the movie and therefore may be missing context from that specific scene. She added that most critics suggested the film is more a “critique of how dependent” society is on technology, rather than it being a treatise on race and culture.
It was then that McEnany revealed that she has not seen the film—nor does she intend to. “I have a lot of movies to see before that one,” she huffed. “I won’t be seeing it.”
Later in primetime, Jesse Watters devoted an entire segment to snarking about Obama working on films and insisting the ex-president is jamming “racial politics” into his productions.
“How do you want to spend your retirement? Maybe play a little golf. Grandkids. Not the Obamas. The community organizer can’t stop, won’t stop,” the former Bill O’Reilly lackey snarled in a rant crammed with right-wing media cliches and buzzwords. “The Obamas coasted into retirement and now identify as Steven Spielberg.”
After airing the “white people” line, which Watters described as Obama wanting to “talk about race and white privilege,” the Fox host welcomed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to weigh in on the so-called controversy. The former GOP presidential hopeful said he actually watched the film but was initially unaware that it “was an Obama movie.”
“It was whatever. Actually, there was an insurrectionist piece there where these rogue military guys end up attacking the country. For what purpose, I don’t know,” the senator said. “[Roberts] was fine in the movie,” he added. “She was kind of a nasty person in the movie. She was just mean, but I would be too if you were living through the apocalypse, I guess.”
Watters ended the interview by asking Rubio if he could “just tell the Obamas to go to the Keys and just shut up,” prompting the Florida lawmaker to cackle and recommend the former president go “play golf again.”
The outrage fest didn’t end there, of course. The next morning, Fox & Friends continued to get the vapors over the film, despite all three hosts admitting they hadn’t seen it. But because Libs of TikTok said the Obamas were “demonizing white people,” the curvy couch denizens felt it necessary to spend an entire segment on the issue.
“We have not seen the movie yet,” co-host Steve Doocy said. “Because it just came out on Friday. There are some people who are saying, you know, those comments are taken out of context, but nonetheless, other people are out there on the interwebs talking about how it had their ears perk up.”
The discussion got weirder from there. Lawrence Jones, the first Black host of the show, brought up his recent use of the slang term “the itis,” noting that it was a “cultural reference” his colleagues didn’t understand at the time. “But it never crossed my mind that my co-anchors were racist because they didn’t know the reference. Y’all just didn’t know,” he added.
Doocy eventually brought up that Jones likely didn’t understand his earlier reference to the 1950s sitcom Make Room for Daddy, pointing out that it’s a “generational” divide, prompting co-host Ainsley Earhardt to ask Jones if it was true that all Black people feel distrust for white people.
“But how do you feel when a movie does say—when people feel like they are demonizing one race? Is that racist if you said—if the shoe were on the other foot? Like we shouldn’t trust white people? I hate if that’s true if that’s how Black people feel,” she lamented. “I don’t want them to feel that way!”
Reiterating that he hadn’t seen the movie, Jones responded that “the statement on its face is discriminatory” before taking it a step further.
“I think there are certain people that kind of put gasoline on the fire,” he concluded. “I don’t know the intentions of the president and the former first lady. I’m just saying as someone that was the president of all of America, that line probably stinks to other people, you know?”
