Megyn Kelly blasted the first lady after she was introduced on CBS as “Dr. Jill Biden” during the NFC Championship Game on Sunday. calling her a “wannabe” for not having a “real” degree and for “insisting on this fake title.”
Biden was sitting next to NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell in a luxury suite at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, where the first lady was rooting for her beloved Eagles during their decisive rout of the undermanned San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.
When CBS cameras showed Biden and Goodell in the box, the television network’s graphics introduced her as “Dr. Jill Biden — First Lady of the United States.”
“Announcers for this Eagles-49ers game just spotted the First Lady in a box and of course call her ‘Dr. Jill Biden’,” Kelly tweeted. “Wonder if she realizes what a wannabe she looks like insisting on this fake title.”
Kelly added: “Get a real MD or just work on your self-esteem.”
Announcers for this Eagles-49ers game just spotted the First Lady in a box and of course call her “Dr. Jill Biden.” Wonder if she realizes what a wannabe she looks like insisting on this fake title. Get a real MD or just work on your self-esteem.
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) January 29, 2023
The tweet prompted Biden defenders to criticize Kelly.
Joyce Vance, a former US attorney, wrote: “When the worst criticism you can muster of the First Lady is her use of a title she legitimately earned.”
Harry Dunn, a Capitol Police officer who faced down Trump supporters during the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riots, tweeted: “You tell someone to work on their self esteem while belittling them. Man you are a piece of work.”
“Such a pathetic, sad human being,” MSNBC executive producer Kyle Griffin tweeted.
In 2007, Jill Biden earned a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware. When her husband, President Joe Biden, served as Barack Obama’s vice president, Jill Biden taught English full time at Northern Virginia Community College.
Jill Biden’s insistence on using the honorific even though she’s not a physician triggered widespread debate about which Ph.D. recipients should be called “doctor.”
In December 2020, The Wall Street Journal published a much-discussed opinion piece by Joseph Epstein, who urged the first lady to do away with the title, “which feels fraudulent, even comic.”
Epstein wrote that Biden’s doctorate of education, which she received after submitting a dissertation titled “Student Retention at the Community College Level: Meeting Students’ Needs,” was a sign that “the prestige of honorary doctorates has declined even further.”
The op-ed triggered outrage, with Epstein being accused of sexism — particularly for referring to Jill Biden as “kiddo.”
Epstein, who at the time was a lecturer at Northwestern University, had his name wiped off the school’s website due to the backlash to his op-ed.
But others noted that the University of Delaware had longstanding ties to Joe Biden, who was a senator representing the state for three decades before Obama tapped him to be his running mate in 2008.
Jill Biden told Stephen Colbert in late 2020 that her doctorate is one of the things she was “most proud of.”
