Megyn Kelly: From feuding with Donald Trump to emerging as a symbol of feminism in the presidential election
The 45-year-old has emerged as the media industry's top property
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Megyn Kelly is the hottest property in American television news right now – and understandably so. Never, surely, has a single journalist been a protagonist in a presidential campaign as has the Fox News host in the can-this-be-really-happening US election of 2016.
The media, collectively and individually, has often played big, even determining, roles in elections: remember the CBS story, later shown to be based on fake documents, about George W Bush’s National Guard Service in 2004, that might have swung that year’s very close election between Bush and Democrat John Kerry?
And what about the scoop by David Corn of Mother Jones, who obtained the tape of Mitt Romney’s supposedly private speech to donors in which he wrote off 47 per cent of the electorate as spongers who would never vote for him? Romney himself admitted later the leak may have cost him the 2012 election.
Finally of course there’s 2000, when the TV networks turned election night into their own public disaster zone, first awarding the decisive state of Florida to Al Gore, then to Bush, and finally declaring it too close to call – all in their eagerness to get the story, however flimsy the facts supporting it. But these were single incidents. This time around Megyn Kelly has been a constant, front and centre of proceedings from the start.
As a moderator in the very first Republican candidates debate back on August 6 2015, sponsored by Fox, Kelly took Donald Trump to task over record of demeaning comments about women, which prompted the future party nominee to suggest she might have been menstruating at the time.
Trump’s fury did not subside; indeed, he refused to take part in a subsequent January 2016 candidates forum which she was again scheduled to moderate. Relations between the pair did however seemed to improve, as Kelly conducted an astonishingly harmonious interview with Trump in May.
But on Tuesday, exactly a fortnight before polling day, a new foe emerged: Newt Gingrich, one of Trump’s most prominent supporters and guest that evening on her Fox programme The Kelly File.
The instant soundbite was Gingrich telling her she was “fascinated by sex,” amid yet more exchanges over Mr Trump’s groping claims. In fact that was just the climax of six minutes of sustained vitriol, in which Kelly’s farewell salvo to her guest was advice to “spend some time working on your anger issues.”
In a way Kelly’s prominence is the natural outgrowth of a campaign in which – above all thanks to Trump – the business of politics and the news/entertainment industry have virtually fused into one, and in which Fox (with honourable exceptions like Chris Wallace and Britt Hume as well Kelly) has often sounded like an inhouse communications department of the Republican party.
But the sex Gingrich alluded to has been a key factor as well. Trump’s patronising and contemptuous attitudes to women have been a leitmotif of campaign 2016 – attitudes that, it became clear this summer, had permeated Fox News itself, when Roger Ailes, founder and chairman of the hugely successful network was stunningly forced to resign amid allegations of sexual harrassment
The headlines generated by the Ailes affair were scarcely smaller than those surrounding Trump’s indiscretions, and once again Kelly was at the centre of the story. Ailes’ public accuser was a former Fox anchor Gretchen Carlson, but it quickly became apparent that other female employees had similar tales to tell.
Whether Kelly, by now one of the network’s biggest stars, was among them remains unclear. But her silence as others leapt to Ailes’ defence was deafening. Had Kelly come out in public support of Ailes, he might well have survived. Without it, he was doomed.
All of which has only cemented Kelly’s reputation as an inhouse contrarian. In the Ailes case, the feelings may have been personal. But in the wider political context of 2016, her role of tolerated dissenter suited Fox well. The network might appear conservative, but no Republican could count on an easy ride from Megyn Kelly. Fair and balanced? Listen to her or Chris Wallace, and Ailes’ slogan becomes almost believable.
The crowning irony though is that Fox, once mainly noted for its line-up of elderly irascible white men like Bill O’Reilly, now also has in its ranks a woman who, whether she likes it or not, has emerged as a symbol of feminism.
And this in an election in which women, repulsed by the behaviour of Trump that Kelly was among the first to draw national attention to, are set to vote for Hillary Clinton in record numbers. No wonder many Trump true believers can’t abide her, portraying her as a Democratic fifth columnist.
Kelly though is laughing all the way to the bank. Kelly’s current contract expires later next year, and Fox News is reportedly ready to pay $20m annually to retain her services, a sum that would put her on a par with O’Reilly, the network’s biggest ratings draw. Rupert Murdoch has told The Wall Street Journal (which, like Fox, he owns) that he hoped to wrap up negotiations for a new deal “very soon.”
Even so, speculation over Kelly’s future rivals that over baseball’s top free agent superstars this winter. CNN, which has been gaining ground on Fox lately, is reputedly more than interested. So is ABC, said to be eyeing her for its morning show line-up. So, presumably, is every other network that's got the money. Joe di Maggio doesn’t come on the market every day.
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