Tag: megyn kelly
Megyn Kelly

Megyn Kelly: Trump Isn't "As Mentally Sharp" As In 2016

Right-wing media outlets have been obsessed with Joe Biden's age, claiming that the 81-year-old president is too old to be seeking reelection — while overlooking the fact that 2024 GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is 77.

But one right-wing media figure who is talking about Trump's age is former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, who moderated the Republican National Committee's fourth 2024 Republican presidential debate. Trump was absent from that event and has expressed no interest in participating in any of the debates the RNC is hosting.

Interviewed by right-wing radio host Glenn Beck on Friday, December 8, the 53-year-old Kelly argued that Trump isn't as "mentally sharp" as he was in the past.

Kelly told Beck, "There's no question that Trump has lost a step or multiple steps. He is confusing Joe Biden for Obama. I know he's now saying he intentionally did that — go back and look at the clips; it wasn't intentional."

Trump, Kelly stressed, has been "repeatedly" making mistakes on the campaign trail, including "confusing countries, confusing cities."

Kelly told Beck, "With all due respect to Trump, this is what happens when you're 77 years old. Trump seems inhuman, but he's not inhuman. He's a human. He's a man."

Reprinted with permission from Alternet.

Megyn Kelly

Gaslighting Right-Wing Pundits Whitewash Jan. 6 Insurrection

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos

The American right has an insurrection problem. It knows that millions of people watched the events of January 6 at the U.S. Capitol unfold in real time. It knows that video and other evidence, such as that compiled by the New York Times' video-investigations team, shows clearly that a violent, armed mob attempted to overturn the outcome of the presidential election—unquestionably an insurrection. And because so many of them played a role in enabling and empowering that mob, they now want all that to just go away.

So they are now turning to the next essential step in creating a right-wing "bloody shirt" trope that enables them to stand reality on its head: gaslighting the public. From Tucker Carlson to Megyn Kelly to Glenn Greenwald to the nutty protesters outside the D.C. Detention Center last weekend, the right and its apologists are doubling down on the claim that January 6 wasn't an insurrection—it was just a protest that got a little out of hand. Who are you gonna believe: a slick pundit or your lying eyes?

Republicans have been parroting this attempted line of defense ever since Carlson first trotted it out in January and then doubled down continuously, leading a kind of "1/6 Truther" movement dedicated to spinning up misinformation and conspiracy theories about the event. GOP members of Congress—who first tried to blame it all on antifa and Black Lives Matter—began regurgitating it in March at a hearing on domestic terrorism.

Kelly made herself the latest leader in the gaslighting parade last week by declaring on her podcast: "It wasn't an insurrection. It wasn't."

"A faction turned," Kelly told her audience. "But there's no question the media represented this as so much worse than it actually was." She added, "We've all seen the video of people, like, screaming in the face of cops, being totally disparaging, and defecating on the floor of the U.S. Capitol, and lawmakers were understandably afraid … and I didn't like seeing it at all."

Kelly went on to argue that mainstream media outlets were "tying the political rhetoric" of Trump's repeated denials that he had lost the election and falsely claiming there had been widespread voter fraud to "what we saw that day"—in spite of the reality that Trump's denials and claims provided the primary motivation for the people who participated in the insurrection, as the hundreds of indictments (resulting in arrest) handed down against them have demonstrated.

Greenwald chimed in on Twitter, agreeing with Kelly's assertion that "it wasn't an insurrection":

Of course it wasn't. But the media spent 5 years tossing around every histrionic term -- treason, traitor, Kremlin agent -- so they now only know how to express themselves in the most unhinged and hysterical manner. Hence, a 3 hour riot becomes an *insurrection.*

Michael Tracey, a frequent Greenwald sidekick, similarly chimed in:

It's always been propagandistic nonsense that "insurrection" was somehow the only acceptable term to describe the events of Jan 6. The term was selected because it furthers the political agenda of Democrats/corporate media, and the law enforcement agenda of federal prosecutors.

Kelly also retweeted a comment from right-wing pundit Byron York, who himself promoted a Wall Street Journal column by Debra Burlingame insisting that "It's a Travesty to Compare the Capitol Siege to 9/11."

Identical sentiments were voiced by protesters Saturday outside the Central Detention Facility in Washington, D.C., where many of the arrested insurrectionists are being held ahead of trial. "Let them go! Let them go! Let them go!" the crowd chanted.

Protesters carried signs declaring that "protests are not insurrections" and "patriots are not terrorists." Protesters called the arrested indictees "nonviolent American patriots."

One of the protesters told reporter Scott MacFarlane that the January 6 Capitol siege didn't meet the definition of an insurrection: "Insurrection has a meaning in law," he said. "It means an armed attempt to take over government."

The cognitive dissonance at work here is remarkable, considering that the man's definition fully describes what the world saw on January 6: A violent attempt by an armed mob to prevent the certification of state ballots with the intention of preventing the traditional peaceful transfer of power from one outgoing president to the incoming, a hallmark of American democracy and its stability. It was fully an insurrectionary attack on our democracy in every aspect of the word's meaning. But the gaslighters want the public to believe they saw something other than what they saw.

The protesters, who were estimated to have numbered about 100 and arrived by a group bus with participants from Illinois, New York, Idaho, and other states, marched through Washington with their signs and banners, which included an American flag draped upside down. They uniformly described the January 6 defendants as "victims."

This is, of course, how the old right-wing trope of "waving the bloody shirt"—the one in which the violent bully is transformed into a victim, and the victim into a bully, all through the magical power of gaslighting—has always worked: First, minimize the violence that has been committed so that the public will have sympathy for the perpetrators and doubt the motives of the accusers. The next step—which is to characterize the accurate portrayal of the violence as exaggerated for political or other motives, and to cast aspersions on the persons attacked—is what naturally follows.

Tracey gave us a preview of that second portion of the dynamic already at work in his Substack essay that Kelly promoted on Twitter, insisting that it wasn't an insurrection:

Unless your brain has been permanently addled by the torrent of hyperbole, no one attempting to be minimally objective could possibly say with a straight face that a several-hour delay of legislative business was in any sense an "existential threat." We know this because the "existence" of the country was never in jeopardy due to the actions of a marauding MAGA mob, most of whom appeared to have no idea what they were even doing inside the "citadel." The government was never at risk of being overthrown, and any insinuation to the contrary has always been beyond laughable.

Never mind that the body of evidence reflected in the New York Times video investigation and elsewhere overwhelmingly tells us that the nation narrowly avoided a catastrophe on January 6, one in which the mob not only nearly overtook Vice President Mike Pence—whom they were demanding be hung—but also members of the House who were sheltering in place in the gallery. The idea that the mob was not mere moments away from preventing the peaceful transfer of power and installing Donald Trump as dictator is what's actually risible.

Americans aren't alone. The January 6 attack on our democracy left our allies around the world—particularly those who look to the United States as the primary beacon of sturdy democracy for other aspiring nations—shaken and concerned about our future. That concern is growing as Republicans continue not only to excuse and rationalize the anti-democratic sentiments and beliefs that fueled the insurrection, but to openly embrace them as well.

"The thing that makes me really worried is how similar what's going on in the U.S. looks to a series of countries in the world where democracy has really taken a big toll and, in many cases, died," Staffan Lindberg, a Swedish political scientist who directs the Varieties of Democracy Institute, said. "I'm talking about countries like Hungary under Orban, Turkey in the early days of Erdogan's rule, Modi in India, and I can go down the line."

As British political scientist Brian Klaas observed in the Washington Post:

U.S. allies see our democracy as a shattered, washed-up has-been. We used to provide a democratic model for the world, but no longer. The chaos, dysfunction and insanity of the past several years have taken a predictable toll.
Newsmax TV Rising To Compete For Conservative Audience

Newsmax TV Rising To Compete For Conservative Audience

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

When President Donald Trump and some of his supporters attack Fox News for being insufficiently supportive of the president, it’s a laughable assertion: even though some prominent figures at the right-wing cable news outlet will criticize Trump at times — Chris Wallace and Shep Smith, for example — opinion hosts like Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Jeanine Pirro continue to be stridently pro-Trump. Nonetheless, One American News Network (OAN) has been proclaiming itself to be the cable news outlet that is more conservative and pro-Trump than Fox — and now, The Daily Beast reports, Newsmax’s new cable venture is hoping to compete with Fox by hiring one its former executives: David Tabacoff.

Tabacoff spent 16 years at Fox News, where he served as Bill O’Reilly’s executive producer — and before that, he spent 25 years at ABC News. O’Reilly had one of Fox News’ top opinion shows before he was fired following sexual harassment allegations. And Newsmax’s Chris Ruddy, the Beast’s Justin Baragona reports, has confirmed that Tabacoff is now part of the Newsmax TV team.

In an e-mail, Ruddy told the Beast, “David is advising us as a consultant. He is one of the greatest producers in television, and we’re glad to have him assist us in building out our programming as we reach over 70 million cable homes.”

Newsmax operates a high-traffic right-wing website, but cable news is a new area for Newsmax — and trying to compete with Fox News is an ambitious and incredibly difficult undertaking. Fox News is still one of the “big three” in cable news: the other two are CNN and liberal-leaning MSNBC (which is much better at presenting conservative viewpoints than Fox News is at presenting liberal or progressive viewpoints — although many of the conservatives at MSNBC, including Joe Scarborough and Nicolle Wallace, are decidedly anti-Trump).

Tabacoff, Baragona notes, is not the first former Fox News executive Newsmax TV has hired: earlier this year, Michael Clemente (who left Fox in 2016) was brought on board as CEO. On top of that, Newsmax TV has been using O’Reilly as a featured guest for “No Spin News” segments — and according to Baragona, Ruddy has indicated that he would like to hire former Fox News star Megyn Kelly.

Ruddy recently told the Hollywood Reporter, “There is a growing disenchantment with Fox News, and we are definitely seeing a rise in viewership with Newsmax.”

Baragona also points out that since August, Newsmax TV has “posted eight job openings.” And Baragona observes that even though Newsmax TV has had “bottom-scraping Nielsen numbers” so far, Fox News is still taking the venture seriously enough that it has forbidden its hosts from making guest appearances on the new cable news channel: Fox News star Jeanine Pirro recently told talk radio host Sebastian Gorka that she has been told by her bosses at Fox that she “cannot do Newsmax.”

In other words, Fox News’ executives want to make sure that Newsmax TV’s “bottom-scraping Nielsen numbers,” as Baragona describes them, stay that way.

 

Megyn Kelly Smacks Down Perspiring, Prevaricating Alex Jones

Megyn Kelly Smacks Down Perspiring, Prevaricating Alex Jones

  As vigorously hyped broadcast events go, Megyn Kelly’s televised confrontation with Internet conspiracy cultist Alex Jones proved something of a dud. Not because Kelly didn’t give it her best. And maybe not even because the former Fox news-blonde’s best falls considerably short of legendary TV inquisitors such as Mike Wallace or even Barbara Walters.

It’s partly a gravitas thing; a matter of stage presence. At this point in her new career as a “mainstream” performer, Kelly hasn’t quite mastered it. She’s intelligent, poised, and almost alarmingly attractive.

But authoritative? Not yet.

So whose idea was it to schedule Kelly opposite CBS’s 60 Minutes anyway? For all of the controversy attending her Father’s Day interview with the Austin-based proprietor of InfoWars, a website that peddles low-IQ political pornography along with male enhancement products and survivalist gear (there’ll be a hot time in the fallout shelter tonight!), the program finished far behind U.S. Open golf and a 60 Minutes re-run during the time period. Dead last.

But the real loser was Jones himself, whom Kelly had little difficulty exposing as a sweaty, blustering fraud. “Some thought we shouldn’t broadcast this interview because his baseless allegations aren’t just offensive, they’re dangerous,” Kelly pointed out. “But here’s the thing: Alex Jones isn’t going away.”

She’s correct on all counts. It’s also true that exposing the sheer fraudulence of a mountebank like Jones could be terribly important. People like him thrive in the semi-shadows of the Internet. Viewers who wouldn’t dream of buying the poison InfoWars peddles need to be more aware of what Jones and similar far-right hucksters like him are all about. Because millions of naïve dimwits are buying, including the President of the United States.

NBC documented several examples of evidence-free allegations going right from Jones’s paranoid rants straight to candidate Trump’s mouth—such as the absurd allegation that Hillary Clinton would show up for a presidential debate high on drugs. Trump thought so too.

Of course, Jones has also alleged that Hillary’s a space alien.

“When I think about all the children Hillary Clinton has personally murdered and chopped up and raped, I have zero fear standing up against her,” Jones said in a YouTube posting just before the 2016 election. “Yeah, you heard me right. Hillary Clinton has personally murdered children. I just can’t hold back the truth anymore.”

That was the infamous “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory InfoWars also promoted. He has since backed off.

Fear of lawsuits can do that sometimes.

To date, Trump has left the space alien thing alone. But you never know. He now claims that the president phones him for advice. There seems no reason to doubt it.

But enough about Trump.

During their interview, Kelly shrewdly zeroed in on Jones’s bizarre insistence that the 2012 massacre of 26 children and teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax—an Obama-orchestrated theatrical spectacle to promote gun control.

That obscene and deeply offensive lie caused one Connecticut NBC affiliate to refuse to air the program. Kelly’s willingness to put Jones on the air initially caused great anger and sorrow among the surviving parents of the slain five- and six-year olds, several of whom have received hate mail and death threats from InfoWars adepts. Their pain is unimaginable.

Ultimately, however, they needn’t have worried. Whether or not NBC drastically re-edited the episode in response to critics, as some have claimed, the end result was nevertheless revealing of InfoWars’ methods.

So long as it fits the paranoid mindset, basically anything goes.

First, Kelly softened Jones up by highlighting his recent lampooning of teenaged terrorist victims in Manchester, England as “liberal trendies.” One of those trendies, she pointed out, was eight years old. She described his practice as one of “reckless accusation, followed by equivocations and excuses.”

On cue, Jones began stammering, equivocating and babbling alibis. Maybe some children really died at Sandy Hook after all, he allowed. “I tend to believe that children probably did die there,” he said. “But then you look at all the other evidence on the other side.”

“Of course,” Kelly said in a brisk voiceover, “there is no ‘evidence on the other side.’ ”

As, indeed, there is not. Nor ever was. Kelly interviewed Neil Heslin, whose six year-old son Jesse died in the tragedy. The brokenhearted father’s courage at standing up to Jones can only be admired. Broadcast images of Jesse’s shining face shamed the blustering fraud.

And ultimately, shame may be the only known antidote for Jones’ brand of political obscenity. People inclined to accept absurd conspiracy theories can be more vulnerable to ridicule than reason. Men particularly fear the laughter of beautiful women. What’s more, precisely because of her longtime affiliation with Fox News, Megyn Kelly could end up being the perfect person for the job.

Assuming, that is, that she wants it.