Megyn Kelly Insists She’s “Still a Journalist” While Explaining Endorsement of Donald Trump

Former network news anchor Megyn Kelly defended her on-stage endorsement of President Donald Trump during his re-election campaign and insisted that she is still a journalist but now exists in a “new world” of podcasting where journalistic ethics don’t apply in an interview in the New York Times on Monday.

Kelly, 54, has been hosting a news, opinion and commentary podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, since 2020 after a career in law and journalism that led her to massive success as a Fox News anchor with a weeknight news show, The Kelly File. But the former TV news personality’s accusations against former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes and a hard-hitting question for Donald Trump at a 2016 election cycle debate led to her exit from the conservative outlet and to NBC News, where she signed a lucrative contract, but famously lost the gig after multiple on-air snafus. 

The popular podcaster candidly spoke about her time with the conservative news behemoth and feelings about some of her colleagues there, her ever-evolving relationship with Trump, and how she is quickly reacting to the rapid morphing of media and journalism in a conversation with  Lulu Garcia-Navarro, host of the Times’ The Interview podcast.

“There’s no question that I owned my bias on Trump and crossed a line that I had never crossed before, and never would have crossed when I was still straight news, ever,” Kelly told the Times when asked about her 2024 Election Day eve on-stage endorsement of Trump, her former foe. “It’s just this weird new hybrid lane I’m in that even made it a possibility in my mind, that I even allowed myself to consider saying yes to the invitation, and it was another before-and-after moment — because for sure, you’re crossing a line, but I had crossed it prior to then.”

That would be when Kelly announced on her show in April that in 2020, she had voted for Donald Trump and told her listeners that Biden’s recently announced Title IX revisions enraged her, making it impossible to vote for him.  Her mended, for now, adversarial relationship with Trump, which she discusses at length with the Times, began with a question at a 2016 debate against Hillary Clinton, where Kelly asked him to explain why he’s called women ​“fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” — a query he chastised her for asking. His wrath followed, as did that of his growing MAGA nation followers and the majority of people at her job at Fox News — who quickly turned on her, she said.

“It was such an annoying nine months,” the former TV host recalled. “I did not want to take an armed guard to Disney World. I did not want this to go on and on. I knew it wasn’t good for me as a journalist, as a Fox News host or as a person to have this level of acrimony constantly aimed at me, and I desperately wanted him to just lay off.”

Kelly also explains that her highly-publicized exit from Fox News was less about Trump and more about her perceived portrayal of Ailes, whom she joined former network host Gretchen Carlson in accusing of sexual harassment as the latter was suing the chairman. In the revealing interview, Kelly’s attitude towards the late Fox chairman seems to have softened, but she is perfectly candid in her assessment of Carlson.

“I didn’t like Gretchen Carlson, who was kind of looking for help, in a way,” Kelly explained. “The whole question was: Can he be this thing who she has alleged he is? And I was really not inclined to help her and stick a knife in him.”

In 2016, after being advanced upon by Ailes in her early days at the network, Kelly complained to a superior about him; nothing came of it, and eventually, she and Ailes returned to a working relationship. Later that year, when Carlson went public with her claims against Ailes, Kelly says she and meteorologist Janice Dean found other women who had been harassed at Fox News. Kelly eventually called Lachlan Murdoch, requesting an outside investigation. Her name was ultimately leaked to the press, along with her accusations, which prompted Zann to confide in her about her experience. She spoke to the Times about her decision to call Murdoch, who did launch a probe into Ailes’ workplace conduct.

“I was under a lot of pressure from Roger’s team, and Roger and his wife, to come out and say he’s not this thing, and he’s incapable of being this thing, which is what everyone was saying,” she said. “And I knew I did not have it in me to lie. The real question was whether I should just stay silent and keep it to myself.”

The majority of the Fox News staff turned on Kelly, she revealed, after she came out with allegations against Ailes. The influential conservative left his position in July 2016 after a reported ultimatum from the Muroch family, resigning in disgrace amid accusations of sexually harassing female Fox employees, including Carlson, Kelly, and Andrea Tantaros, another on-air host; he died after a subdural hematoma that was aggravated by his hemophilia. 

Following her Fox exit, Kelly briefly joined NBC News in a triple role of TODAY host, correspondent for special events and host of a Sunday night newsmagazine show, reportedly for a salary of between $15 million and $20 million per year.  But an offhand comment indicating her acceptance of blackface led to her demise shortly after she joined the show, proving that perhaps a traditional network — or maybe television news — wasn’t for her. In the interview, she criticized network television news as “dying” and a “dinosaur” and touted the right-wing podsphere as a place where she feels very comfortable. In fact, Kelly’s successful show has now led her to launch her own podcasting network. 

“I’m still a journalist,” the host insisted. “I break news all the time, and when I sit with Trump or anyone else in the administration, I ask tough questions … Look, it’s a tough job to do. You have to be able to hit the people you admire, and I do. Right before the election. I ripped on Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally as too bro-tastic and got specific about why. 

“If you haven’t sold your soul, you have to be willing to criticize the people you admire on your, quote, side, and my owning my bias by going out there onstage with Donald Trump and saying, ‘I’m voting for him, and you should, too,’ is a bonus when it comes to my credibility,” she said. “Now everyone has zero doubt about where I stand, and they can filter everything I say through the appropriate lens.”