‘Megyn Kelly Presents’: Donald Trump Was the Dullest

Tuesday night’s Megyn Kelly Presents special began with the interview most people were tuning in to see: a sit-down with Donald Trump. “Let’s talk about us,” said the host. They rehashed Trump’s attack on Kelly after the first Republican debate, but now he was nothing but nice. He was also nothing but repetitive. No matter how hard Kelly tried to get him to say something new — asking him about the brother who died from alcoholism; whether he’s ever been “wounded” emotionally — Trump gave answers we’ve heard hundreds of times before. The man has no gift for self-reflection. Asked if he had any regrets, he said, “Absolutely [but] I don’t want to discuss [them].” The most quotable new comment occurred when Trump told Kelly that if he loses the election, he’ll consider his run “a total and complete waste of time and energy and money.” Well, that and the fact that his favorite book is All Quiet on the Western Front, and his favorite movie is Citizen Kane.

Related: Donald Trump’s Presidential Training Ground? The WWE.

It must have been very frustrating for Kelly — I’d hate to be the person who had to sift through the footage of their taping, trying to tease out a few nuggets. Trump didn’t rule out future friction between the two — “This could happen again, with us” — but, beyond Trump’s inability to be original in his phrasing, the interview lacked something: spontaneity.

If, as has been said, Kelly is positioning herself to be “the new Barbara Walters” in doing primetime celebrity interviews for an entertainment network (not Fox News), she ought to update the old Walters formula and do a few of these interviews live. Kelly thrives as a live broadcaster, able to craft sharp, articulate questions on the fly with a lawyerly precision — that talent ought to be used in this format. Kelly employed Bill Geddie, Walters’ longtime producer, for this special, and the hour was staged exactly the way Walters’ specials were: Kelly doing her own voice-overs, visiting some of her subjects in their natural habitats, asking personal questions that could border on the sentimental. To Kelly’s credit, her delivery scrubs most of the corniest queries clean of mawkishness, but the hour didn’t serve her best talents well.

Kelly’s other guests were attorney Robert Shapiro, Michael Douglas, and Laverne Cox. By far the best of these segments was the one with Cox. Kelly seemed to genuinely surprise Cox in asking her about her suicide attempt at age 11 (“Megyn, I didn’t know we were going to go there!”), and the two had an easy rapport — their conversation was loose and funny and engaging.

Clearly, Kelly has a future doing interviews like these. Whether it’s the best use of her gifts is another question.