Some people are taking the election results better than others. Cities across the country saw widespread celebrations when major news networks called the presidential race for Joe Biden.
Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is handling things a little differently.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly backpedaled fast Friday afternoon, quickly deleting a meme she posted on Twitter showing Queen Elizabeth about to do a drive-by shooting of Meghan Markle. Megyn Kelly is joined by Abigail Shrier, author of the controversial book “Irreversible Damage,' to discuss the explosion in transgender teens, her research on the topic, the oppressive messages being fed to young girls, and technology’s effect on kids. Follow The Megyn Kelly Show on all social pla.
meltdown megyn pic.twitter.com/r6t0N3y87l
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 8, 2020
Kelly was in full meltdown mode all weekend, using Twitter to air her grievances against the libs, Biden and anyone else in her path. The most coherent version of her argument seemed to be a pretty typical conservative complaint: that right wingers are marginalized for their beliefs. It’s a straightforward argument, even if ignores that conservatives have done nothing but troll liberals for the past several years, making fun of their every reaction to Donald Trump’s inane authoritarianism. But Kelly can’t even make the argument cleanly. Her examples, if you can even call them that, devolve quickly into broad generalizations and stereotypes that reduce her and so many other conservative commentators to plain old whining.
You have every right to your anger Ted. As do GOP voters who have been unfairly vilified by leaders on the L. And it won’t go away, in either case, bc a politician wins & tweets “Healed!” He needs to start at home. Talk to AOC & the media re: unity. Then some GOPers might listen. https://t.co/VCLu0kh2Ez
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) November 9, 2020
Kelly crows at the suggestion her complaints are a byproduct of her white identity, but the proof is in the pudding. Crying persecution is the only thing she did well as a famous TV anchor. Anything more than grousing about Santa’s whiteness was beyond her purview. Even her cringeworthy NBC talk show rehabilitation abruptly ended when she couldn’t help but wonder aloud what the heck was so racist about wearing blackface on Halloween.
Kelly’s current anger at Biden’s victory is more performative than it is righteous, of course. After skewering the left for years, she and other right wing media types have quickly reverted back to crying persecution. It didn’t sell nearly as well when Trump was in office not getting things done, but the moment he’s pushed out, the fix is back in. Conservatives are now the subjugated minority, clowned and demonized for their beliefs while the Democrats hem and haw about racism, white supremacy, misogyny, and state violence—things that Trump actually weaponized. And Kelly isn’t even the best one at arguing it.
Joe Biden is calling for unity. That’s nice. I look forward to his condemnation of Michelle Obama, who suggested that 70 million Americans who didn’t vote for Biden supported “lies, hate, chaos and division” in order to vote for the “status quo.”
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) November 8, 2020
Ben Shapiro is the master of grievance posting, forging bad faith arguments and abject stupidity into chud media god status. He’s built his massive online audience through performative ignorance. But this is laughably lazy even for him. It’s fair enough to criticize Biden’s “unity” messaging as premature—how can one heal without a full accounting of wounds?—but both Kelly and Shapiro are using it as proof of double standards they’d never dream of applying to themselves or anyone who identifies with them. Shapiro weaving Michelle Obama into his whinge makes it all the more obvious—when making a dumb argument, mention a boogeyman-like figure to really hammer your bullshit point home.
The days and weeks ahead are uncertain, but right wing media’s pre-Trump grudge mode is all too familiar. The conservative oppression olympics have officially begun, and it’s a mad dash to the medal stand.
© Provided by The Daily Beast Phillip Faraone
Underemployed television talent Megyn Kelly—the former Fox News star who jumped to NBC News for $23 million a year but was fired 17 months later for some impolitic comments about Halloween blackface—has been off the air for more than two years.
Which gives her a lot of free time, apparently, to fight with liberal celebrities and Democratic office-holders on Twitter on behalf of her one-time nemesis, soon-to-be ex-president Donald Trump, and Trump’s irate and aggrieved supporters making baseless claims of election fraud.
Late Monday, she posted a snippet from the latest installment of her podcast, The Megyn Kelly Show, in which she doubled down on her angry attacks against Democrats and President-elect Joe Biden for their alleged “hypocrisy” in his Saturday speech calling for national unity and an end to the demonization of political adversaries.
“For four years they have been called the dregs of society,” Kelly—who claims to channel the rage, sorrow, and injured feelings of millions of disaffected, disenfranchised Trump supporters—declared in the segment, which includes soundbites of such celebs as Rob Reiner and Joy Behar, among others, as if Biden is personally responsible for their rhetoric.
“It wasn’t enough to go after Trump. Anyone who supported him was labeled a racist, xenophobic, transphobic bigot,” Kelly claimed hyperbolically. “Now that Biden’s won, those 71 million Republican voters are supposed to simply choose ‘healing.’ And all that stuff that the left said about them being absolutely awful, well, forget about that. ”
While Kelly’s audio op-ed is rife with false equivalencies, at least she acknowledges that Biden won. Because she does little if anything career-wise that isn’t calculated, the question is, what is Kelly up to? Now that she has formed her own independent media company, Devil May Care Media, with an assist from former Glenn Beck executive Chris Balfe, is she positioning herself to become a congenial destination for allegedly persecuted Trumpkins?
Whatever is going on, Kelly’s freshly configured hyper-partisan persona is hardly designed to appeal to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch’s new world order, which in recent days, with a couple of notable exceptions, has treated the 45th president of the United States as fatally damaged goods.
“Megyn promised to speak without worrying about corporate overlords silencing her,” Kelly’s former Fox News colleague Juliet Huddy told The Daily Beast. “That’s why she launched her own podcast network—and clearly she’s showing she’s fearless when it comes to criticism, which she’s obviously getting a lot of. If anyone had any doubt about her political convictions, I think she’s cleared those doubts up.”
Newmax CEO and majority owner Chris Ruddy, meanwhile, told The Daily Beast: “Megyn Kelly is a great television talent. She’s got a big following, and I would be open to considering her for Newsmax. We have had some discussions with her but I can’t reveal the details.”
Aside from discussing a possible role at Newsmax—which has become even more aggressively Trumpist since Nov. 3 and has yet to call the election for Biden—Kelly has also spoken to the even more virulently Trump-worshipping One America News Network, along with other television outlets, according to a knowledgeable industry source.
However, a source close to Kelly, who will celebrate her 50th birthday on Nov. 18, told The Daily Beast that she has “received multiple 7-figure offers to return to TV” and has “turned them all down” because, in the end, she wishes not to answer to bosses, and still has plenty of cash from the balance of her truncated three-year, $69 million NBC contract. What’s more, the source said, she wants to spend more time with her family. “Money is no longer a lure,” said the source. “Her kids are.”
Megyn Kelly Twitter Fox News
Yet in the week since more than 75 million Americans, compared to Trump’s around 71 million voters, gave President-elect Joe Biden a preliminary total of 290 electoral votes—20 more than he needed to win, compared to the current president’s 214, the statistical projections of Kelly’s right-leaning, previously Trump-friendly former employer—Kelly’s personal Twitter feed has been a raging, pro-Trumpbickerfest.
Written like a man who’s been in his basement for a year. https://t.co/bnP5pwprDj
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) November 8, 2020Hardly the level-headed, politically adept, champion of sexually harassed women portrayed by Charlize Theron in the Fox News docudrama Bombshell, the Twitter version of Megyn Kelly is a scrappy, razor-tongued brawler. Indeed, she has been squabbling with everyone from Biden to the Cuomo brothers to Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California, to even her former Fox News colleague and current CNN commentator, Kirsten Powers.
Bill Maher Megyn Kelly Twitter
Megyn Kelly's Extramarital Affairs
“Poor @Kirsten Powers. Always promising to be better and then…not,” Kelly retorted after Powers, a former Daily Beast columnist, tweeted at Kelly and Ric Grenell, Trump’s erstwhile acting director of national intelligence: “yeah it makes total sense that Biden’s call for unity and healing and the end of demonization political opponents would be offensive to you and them. Smh.”
Megyn Kelly Twitter Facebook
Late Monday, Powers—who famously joined an epic on-air battle with Kelly in July 2010 over her apparent obsession with the New Black Panther Party, continued returning fire: “Hi Megyn. Yes, I will always try to do better, will fall short, and will continue trying. If that makes me pathetic in your book, so be it. If you ever decide to try and do better, I can promise you—I won't mock you for it.”