Weeks after helping President-elect Donald Trump deliver his campaign’s closing message while embracing him on a rally stage, right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly insisted that she is “not on anybody’s team” and is merely an “independent” journalist.
During a Thursday interview on Sky News Australia, Kelly spent several minutes slamming MSNBC power couple Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski for recently admitting that they visited Trump to “restart communications.” She accused the Morning Joe hosts of being “full of shit” for trekking to Mar-a-Lago to “lick the boot” after spending several years describing Trump as “fascist” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
All the while, the former Fox News star sneered at Brzezinski for promoting female empowerment, going so far as to mockingly impersonate the MSNBC host’s infamous 2012 Vanity Fair photoshoot by climbing onto a table herself and hoisting her leg in the air.
“She’s an idiot. That’s the other thing. She’s a dope. And by the way, she’s constantly lecturing us about women’s rights like she’s so progressive,” Kelly fumed to Sky News host Paul Murray. “I’m so over her. She’s about women’s rights and empowerment… you’re full of shit and we all know it!”
Amid the onslaught of criticism that Morning Joe has received for “kissing the ring,” prompting its core liberal audience to flee in droves, Kelly has stood out with her gleeful mockery of the pair this week. Calling them “grifters,” she’s even made common cause with longtime foe Keith Olbermann, agreeing with the ex-MSNBC star that Brzezinski and Scarborough are “confidence tricksters.”
She devoted much of her Sky News appearance to continuing her broadsides against the MSNBC pair, taking issue with Morning Joe’s coverage of Trump prior to his election victory this month.
“It wasn’t just ‘Hitler,’ and ‘fascist,’ it was also eight years of ‘Racist! Sexist! Rapist!’ That’s what he was being called all over their show and MSNBC and it’s all just forgotten,” she grumbled. “It’s nothing? He’s not a rapist? He’s not Hitler?!”
Kelly then imagined Trump’s reaction to their visit. “Bend it! Get down! Nice and low! Pucker up! Lick the boot! And now the backside! Do it again,” she dramatically exclaimed. “That’s the only thing I like about it. Lower! On your bellies now. Lick it. Do it.”
Kelly went on to theorize that the reason the MSNBC hosts went down to Mar-a-Lago in the first place was because “their ratings are in the toilet” and they’re “doing what they can to generate interest in the show.” At the same time, she said the “primary reason” was so they had “access to power,” something Kelly claimed she was above.
“I have the opposite,” she insisted. “As soon as anybody starts inviting me like too much into the fold, I repel. I’m like, ‘I’m out.’ I’m not on anybody’s team. I’m not on your team, not on his team, or her team. I’m a journalist, I’m an independent, I’m not putting on anybody’s jersey.”
But just three weeks ago, Kelly took the stage at a Pennsylvania rally to heap praise on Trump while endorsing him for president.
“He got mocked by the left by saying he would be a protector of women,” she said alongside a smiling Trump. “He will be a protector of women and it’s why I’m voting for him. He will close the border and he will keep the boys out of women’s sports where they don’t belong.”
Nine years after Trump called her “nasty” and insinuated she was menstruating for asking him about his misogynistic attacks during a Republican primary debate, Kelly hugged the soon-to-be president on stage before posing a photo of themselves together on social media. “God bless him. Go vote for him!” Kelly’s tweet read.
Once NBC News colleagues with Brzezinski and Scarborough before departing over the uproar she sparked by defending blackface on Halloween, Kelly made waves this past Halloween by embracing the MAGA trend of wearing a garbage bag and Make America Great Hat as a costume. This was a response to President Joe Biden supposedly calling Trump supporters “garbage,” comments he quickly clarified and walked back.
Even though Kelly said last year that her yearslong feud was water “under the bridge,” Trump himself has accused the ex-Fox host of merely “making a career of pretending she likes me” in order to stay relevant with her right-wing audience.
