Our Love/Hate Relationship With Fox Anchor Megyn Kelly

Yahoo Style Contributors
image

Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. (Photo: Getty Images)

It’s hard to ignore Megyn Kelly. Between the fights she’s been getting into with Donald Trump (who now says he won’t appear on a Fox News debate tonight if Kelly’s moderating), her Vanity Fair cover, and the fact that her Fox News show, The Kelly File, has been snatching viewers away from top-rated Bill O’Reilly, the 45-year-old broadcast journalist has become one of the most polarizing figures of the current election cycle. Some days she seems like the only sane person on Fox News; on others she sounds like a right-wing nut job. Here are the five times we hated her and the five times we hated ourselves for liking her.

Love

  • When she fired back at a mansplaining Rand Paul. After Paul criticized Savannah Guthrie for how she conducted an interview on Today (“Why don’t you let me explain instead of talking over me, OK? … That would be sort of a better way to approach an interview”), Kelly laid into the Republican senator on her show.

  • When she asked Trump about sexist insults he’d made toward women. At the first GOP debate last August, Kelly asked Trump: “You’ve called women you don’t like ‘fat pigs,’ ‘dogs,’ ‘slobs,’ and ‘disgusting animals.’ … Does that sound to you like the temperament of a man we should elect as president?” Trump has since threatened to skip the GOP debate, calling Kelly “a lightweight reporter.”

  • When she fired back at Mike Gallagher for calling maternity leave a “racket.” The radio host derided Kelly for taking three months of maternity leave after the birth of her daughter in 2011. Once she returned to the air, she brought him onto her show and promptly eviscerated him.

  • When, in her most famous moment, she said what we were all thinking about Karl Rove during the announcement of the 2012 election results. Kelly took a hit at the so-called political mastermind during the election returns, revealing that the emperor had no clothes. She asked the blustering political consultant, who would not concede a Republican defeat, “Is this just math you do as a Republican to make yourself feel better or is this real?” Burn.

Hate

  • When she insisted that Jesus and Santa are white men. In 2013, following a Slate article that suggested the possibility of embracing a nonwhite Santa Claus, Kelly went on the air and declared the idea preposterous because obviously both Santa and Jesus are white. Um, what?

  • When she refused to take a stand on reproductive rights. In her Vanity Fair profile, Kelly seemed almost proud of the fact that her position on abortion is known only to her husband — though, on the face of it, she seems highly supportive of women’s rights.

  • When she claimed that the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) would send “child rapists” to conduct the census. In 2009, when the ACORN video controversy was at its height, Kelly invited a spokesman for the community organizing group onto her show and asked if “child rapists” would be conducting the census.

  • When she lent a sympathetic ear to the Duggars. During Kelly’s interview last June with 19 Kids and Counting parents Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, whose eldest son, Josh, had molested five underage girls, Kelly gave the family a platform to defend Josh’s actions. Where were her hard-hitting questions?

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest for nonstop inspiration delivered fresh to your feed, every day.