Former 'The Biggest Loser' Star Jillian Michaels Facing Backlash for 'Slavery' Comments

Jillian Michaels is under scrutiny for remarks about slavery made during a panel on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip.

On Thursday, August 14, the former coach of The Biggest Loser defended a new review of Smithsonian Museum content, stating that it would not distort the past.

“He’s not whitewashing slavery,” Michaels said, arguing that “you cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery to just one race, which is pretty much what every single exhibit does.”

Michaels further contended that slavery is “thousands of years old” and suggested its footprint in U.S. history is sometimes overstated because “only a small percentage” of white Americans owned enslaved people.

Phillip challenged that framing on-air: “I’m surprised that you’re trying to litigate who was the beneficiary of slavery.”

Clips from the segment quickly went viral, and the reaction centered on Jillian Michaels’ comments rather than the policy debate that prompted the discussion.

Journalist Touré pushed back on TikTok, disputing the usefulness of a “two percent” statistic and saying, “The point of the two percent stat talking point is to say it wasn’t that big a deal… Everyone who benefited from the American economy at that time benefited from slavery.”

Social media commenters also questioned what the remarks could mean at home for Jillian Michaels, who adopted her daughter Lukensia from Haiti in 2012.

One YouTube user wrote, “Someone rescue that child from this woman, this is how [Clarence] Thomases are made.” Another commenter added, “For a white person to adopt a Black or POC child in this very racist world is damned serious business, and in my opinion, only the truly self-aware anti-racists among them have any business doing it.”

The televised exchange came the same week federal cultural institutions were directed to review museum programming to ensure it is “accurate, patriotic, and enlightening,” following a March executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which called for eliminating “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology.”