Earlier this week, Kelly Ripa, angered fans by saying that her 22-year-old son lives in “extreme poverty.”
But instead of rolling over and taking the backlash, she defended her comment by further explaining her son’s typical-college-student living conditions.
ICYMI, earlier this week, Kelly Ripa made a comment on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that inadvertently ticked quite a few people off.
She said that her 22-year-old son lives in “extreme poverty,” which is hard to believe, on account of his mother and father, Mark Consuelos, being pretty well-off as far as we can tell.
During the interview, she explained that her son, Michael, has gone off to college and is subsequently, short on cash most of the time — as most college students typically are.
“I think he loves the freedom. He hates paying his own rent,” she said .
“He’s chronically poor,” she added. “I don’t think he ever really experienced extreme poverty like now.”
Naturally, fans thought to themselves, “how could Kelly Ripa and Mark Consuelos’ son ever truly know what ‘extreme poverty’ feels like?”
Kelly made a joke about the ‘Halloween money’ her parents send her kids.
She explained it’s a bit of a tradition for her parents to send Michael and his siblings $20 for Halloween.
I’ve never heard of getting Halloween money before, but candy ain’t cheap.
This year, Michael reacted to the Halloween money in a different way.
“For years, my kids sort of ignored the $20,” Kelly said. “But now that he’s living on his own, he’s called, like, three times. ‘Has the Halloween envelope arrived?'”
Apparently, Michael doesn’t exactly have access to the BOMD (bank of mom and dad) since he flew the coop.
But regardless, fans reacted exactly how you’d expect them to:
Badly.
Fans suggested that there’s no way that Kelly’s son is actually living in poverty since she spoke of it, almost proudly.
Either that or she just straight-up doesn’t know what extreme poverty actually is.
Her being “out of touch” was a comment complaint.
Some people found her comments humorously out of touch, like this person who compared her to Lucille Bluth from Arrested Development.
Others were not as amused.
Some felt that Kelly should just suck it up and help her son out instead of publicly calling him out for living ‘in poverty.’
But Kelly was not interested in taking any more criticism over her remark so instead, she fired back — defending herself and explaining that her son isn’t being fed with a silver spoon ATM.
She called the backlash “fake” and stuck with her original statement — that her son is, in fact, poor.
Things really hit the fan when somebody left this comment on one of Kelly’s Instagram posts:
Kelly replied to this comment, and let’s just say, she did not hold back.
“Michael goes to college and is a senior and works full time,” she wrote.
“He is in his first non parent subsidized apt with roommates.”
“I’m used to getting a lot of slack because people love to have fake outrage over something they didn’t see,” she continued.
“They only read a headline and wag their tired fingers.”
“I didn’t grow up privileged and neither did [Mark Consuelos].”
“We work and we expect our kids to as well. And the fact that a pack of fools want to [expletive] about that, I say let them,” she concluded.
Fans applauded her defense, and praised her for raising her son to have such a solid work ethic.
“Thank you! You sound rational,” Kelly replied to this comment , relieved that somebody understood where she was coming from.
A lot of people understood what Kelly meant to say.
This person thinks people are really over-reacting to a throwaway comment that tons of parents have made about their kids learning to support themselves for the first time.
This person compared Kelly to Will Smith!
If all wealthy parents took this angle with their kids, the world would be a much better place, amirite?
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Other fans praised her for not backing down or retracting her statement.Trolls need to learn that they aren’t always right!
They also commended her and her husband for raising their children not to be entitled.
It must be hard to be a regular contributing member of society knowing both of your parents are rich and famous, but it will ultimately turn them into humbled, down-to-earth, hard-working adults.
Going through an “extreme poverty” phase in college builds character!
Let us know what you think of Kelly Ripa’s defense to her saying that her son lives in “extreme poverty”!
Are fans overreacting to what was clearly hyperbole?
